' 'It is strange how many people do not wish to speak of the dead. They send cards or flowers, but if they call they talk of the weather or my health, or of their own. Of anything but Lockwood. And I feel as if they are wishing him out of existence. It is most unreasonable of me; I daresay they do it out of consideration for my feelings.'
'And perhaps out of embarrassment,' Charlotte added, before remembering that this was a formal visit; she did not know this woman at all, and her frank opinions were not called for. She felt the heat rise in her face. 'I am sorry.'
Amethyst bit her lip. 'You are perfectly right, Miss Ellison. We so seldom know how to deal honestly with other people's emotions when we do not share them. It is most unpatriotic of me to say so, but I fear it is something of a national failing.'
'Indeed.' Charlotte had never been anywhere else, so she had no idea whether it was so or not, but she had just rashly claimed to have returned from a visit abroad, so she could only nod and agree.
' 'I had a sister,'' she rushed on, ' 'who died in most tragic circumstances, and I found it exactly the same. Please, if you wish to, tell me of Sir Lockwood, anything you care to recall. I should be neither embarrassed nor uninterested. It is part of the respect we feel for those we admire that we should
159
continue to speak of them when they are no longer with us, and to praise them to others.''
'You are very kind, Miss Ellison.'
'Not at all.' Charlotte felt again a guilt which she expected would hurt her indefinitely, but she could not stop now. 'Tell me how you met? I expect it was romantic?'
'Not in the slightest!' Amethyst nearly laughed, and her face became soft at the memory, the echo of the girl she'd been was in the lines of her mouth and the momentary smoothness of her brow. 'I bumped into him at a political meeting where I had gone with my elder brother. I remember I was wearing a cream hat with a feather on it, and a necklace of amber beads of which I was so fond I kept fingering it. Unfortunately it broke and scattered all over the floor. I was very upset, and bent to pick the beads up, and only made it worse. The rest cascaded all over the place. One gentleman stepped on one and lost his balance, falling against a large lady with a dog in her arms. She shrieked, the dog jumped and ran away under her neighbor's skirts. All of which put the speaker off, who quite lost his place. Lockwood glared at me and told me to compose myself, because I am afraid I was beginning to giggle. But he did help me find the beads.''
Tea was brought and she poured it, having dismissed the maid, and for the next thirty minutes Charlotte listened while she recounted her courtship, and one or two later events in her marriage. None of them showed Lockwood Hamilton as anything but a gentle, rather serious person who, beneath his outer, comfortable, rather pompous public face, was a vulnerable man, deeply in love with his second wife. How he had come to have his throat cut in the darkness on Westminster Bridge grew more inexplicable with every sentence.
It was well after four when the parlormaid knocked and announced that Mr. Barclay Hamilton had called.
Amethyst's skin drained of color and all the life left her eyes. In the midst of the recollections of happiness some pain
160
had plunged right through her and brought back all her present loneliness and tragedy in its wake.
' 'Ask him to come in,'' she said, forcing her voice a little. She turned to Charlotte.' 'My husband's son by his first wife. I hope you do not mind? It will only be a matter of courtesy, and I do not wish you to feel as if you must leave.'
' 'But if it is a family matter,'' Charlotte felt compelled by duty to offer,' 'might my presence not cause embarrassment? Surely-'
'No, not at all. We are not close. Indeed your presence may very well make it easier-for both of us.'
It was so clearly a plea, for all the formality of her words, that Charlotte felt excused to stay, and wished she had not been.
The parlormaid returned and showed in a man perhaps ten years younger than Amethyst, very lean, with a sensitive face now almost white with tension. He looked only momentarily at Charlotte, but she knew he was disconcerted to see her there, and it robbed him
