she would come post haste to fetch you.'
'I shall never be well again till I get back to Walworth,' answered Bella, who was low-spirited and inclined to tears this morning, a reaction after her good spirits of yesterday.
'We'll try a week or two at Varese first,' said Stafford. 'When you can walk halfway up Monte Generoso without palpitation of the heart, you shall go back to Walworth.'
'Poor Mother, how glad she will be to see me, and how sorry that I've lost such a good place.'
This conversation took place on the boat when they were leaving Bellaggio. Lotta had gone to her friend's room at seven o'clock that morning, long before Lady Ducayne's withered eyelids had opened to the daylight, before even Francine, the French maid, was astir, and had helped to pack a Gladstone bag with essentials, and hustled Bella downstairs and out of doors before she could make any strenuous resistance.
'It's all right,' Lotta assured her. 'Herbert had a good talk with Lady Ducayne last night, and it was settled for you to leave this morning. She doesn't like invalids, you see.'
'No,' sighed Bella, 'she doesn't like invalids. It was very unlucky that I should break down, just like Miss Tomson and Miss Blandy.'
'At any rate, you are not dead, like them,' answered Lotta, 'and my brother says you are not going to die.'
It seemed rather a dreadful thing to be dismissed in that offhand way, without a word of farewell from her employer.
'I wonder what Miss Torpinter will say when I go to her for another situation,' Bella speculated, ruefully, while she and her friends were breakfasting on board the steamer.
'Perhaps you may never want another situation,' said Stafford.
'You mean that I may never be well enough to be useful to anybody?'
'No, I don't mean anything of the kind.'
It was after dinner at Varese, when Bella had been induced to take a whole glass of Chianti, and quite sparkled after that unaccustomed stimulant, that Mr Stafford produced a letter from his pocket.
'I forgot to give you Lady Ducayne's letter of adieu!' he said.
'What, did she write to me? I am so glad — I hated to leave her in such a cool way; for after all she was very kind to me, and if I didn't like her it was only because she was too dreadfully old.'
She tore open the envelope. The letter was short and to the point:
Goodbye, child. Go and marry your doctor. I enclose a farewell gift for your trousseau.
ADELINE DUCAYNE
'A hundred pounds, a whole year's salary — no — why, it's for a — . A cheque for a thousand!' cried Bella. 'What a generous old soul! She really is the dearest old thing.'
'She just missed being very dear to you, Bella,' said Stafford.
He had dropped into the use of her Christian name while they were on board the boat. It seemed natural now that she was to be in his charge till they all three went back to England.
'I shall take upon myself the privileges of an elder brother till we land at Dover,' he said; 'after that — well, it must be as you please.'
The question of their future relations must have been satisfactorily settled before they crossed the Channel, for Bella's next letter to her mother communicated three startling facts.
First, that the enclosed cheque for one thousand pounds was to be invested in debenture stock in Mrs Rolleston's name, and was to be her very own, income and principal, for the rest of her life.
Next, that Bella was going home to Walworth immediately.
And last, that she was going to be married to Mr Herbert Stafford in the following autumn.
'And I am sure you will adore him, Mother, as much as I do,' wrote Bella. 'It is all good Lady Ducayne's doing. I never could have married if I had not secured that little nest-egg for you. Herbert says we shall be able to add to it as the years go by, and that wherever we live there shall be always a room in our house for you. The word 'mother- in-law' has no terrors for him.'
Lunch at Charon's
Melanie Tem
Melanie Tem is an adoption social worker who lives in Denver, Colorado, with her husband, writer and editor Steve Rasnic Tem. They have four children and three grandchildren.
Her nine novels include Prodigal, which won the Bram Stoker Award for first novel , Revenant, Black River and The Tides. Two more novels are forthcoming from Leisure Books, and her recent short story appearances include Dark Terrors 5 , Museum of Horrors and Extremes 2.
About 'Lunch at Charon's', the author explains: 'My eighty-three-year-old friend is expected to be flattered when people tell her she doesn't look her age. My twenty-five-year-old friend weeps over the first crow's feet at the corner of her eye. My sixty-year-old friend says his body has betrayed him because it's slowing down. Hardly anybody wants to call death out of the shadows and make friends with it.
'All this has something to do with the vampire mythos, I think, and also something to do with the genesis of this story.'
Amy Alghieri is dead. That's three out of four. Leaving only me.
I heard about Amy at the gym this morning. She didn't work out — obviously — but she and my personal trainer Vonda were close; Amy'd been Vonda's physics professor in college, and a friendship had developed. 'A massive
