“What will Flora do?” cried Jane. Her eyes filled suddenly with tears.
“Lily Furness should have thought of that,” said Mrs. Ward.
Jane’s father looked at his wife very soberly.
“Will you give me a cup of coffee, Lizzie?” he said. He sat down quietly at his end of the table.
“I—I want to go over to Flora,” said Jane suddenly. “She’ll be all alone—with Muriel gone.” A sudden memory of whom Muriel had gone with froze the words on her lips.
“Eat your breakfast first, kid,” said her father. Her mother handed him his coffee cup. “Ring for Minnie, Lizzie,” he said.
Minnie came in very promptly with the steaming cereal. Her face looked shocked, too, but discreetly curious and very subtly, delicately pleased. Jane felt that Minnie was enjoying disaster. She choked down a few spoonfuls of oatmeal and bolted a cup of scalding coffee.
“I’m going, now,” she said. She rose as she spoke.
“Jane”—her mother’s voice was just a little doubtful—“I don’t quite like your going over there, so soon—all alone—”
“I want to go,” said Jane. “I want to be with Flora.”
“I think you had better wait,” said Mrs. Ward, “until I can go with you.”
Jane stood irresolutely beside her chair.
“Let her go, Lizzie,” said Mr. Ward. “She may be able to do something for that poor child.”
Jane’s mother’s face was still a little doubtful, but she made no further objection as Jane turned toward the door.
“How Lily Furness could do this to Muriel,” Jane heard her say, very solemnly. “It will kill Mrs. Lester.”
“I think the honours are still Muriel’s,” said Mr. Ward gravely. “She did a good deal to Lily Furness first.”
Jane walked very slowly and soberly down Pine Street in the brilliant April sunshine. The grass plots were already green and there was an emerald mist on the plume-like boughs of the elm trees. The streets were quite deserted, save for a milk wagon or two and an occasional bicycle. Jane saw the first robin, prospecting for worms, under Flora’s budding lilac bushes.
The shades were all drawn down in the big brownstone house. Halfway up the front steps, Jane stopped in dismay. She hadn’t expected to see the great bow of purple silk and the huge bunch of violets on the doorbell. She didn’t quite know whether to ring it or not. As she stood hesitantly in the vestibule, the door was opened silently. The Furnesses’ elderly butler stood gravely on the threshold. His face looked very old and grey and tired and his eyes were sunken. Jane suddenly realized that he had been crying. As she stepped into the silent hall she felt her own eyes fill quickly with tears.
The house was very dark, because of the drawn window shades. A great vase of Easter lilies stood on the hall table. Their pure, penetrating perfume suddenly recalled the church chancel of yesterday.
“May—may I see Miss Flora?” asked Jane.
Suddenly she heard a masculine step behind the drawing-room portieres. The tall, slim figure of Stephen Carver was framed in their green folds. His eager young face looked strangely serious. His manner was curiously hushed and formal. Nevertheless, his eyes lit up when he saw Jane.
“Jane!” he said softly. “How like you to come!” He walked quickly over to her side.
“How is Flora?” asked Jane. “Can I see her?”
“She’s in her room,” said Stephen. “I haven’t seen her, myself, since—last night.”
“Is—is she—terribly broken up?” asked Jane.
Stephen nodded gravely.
“And Mr. Furness?” questioned Jane. She hoped very much that she would not have to meet Mr. Furness.
“He’s with—Aunt Lily,” said Stephen. “He’s been there right along. I don’t think he’s slept at all.” There was a little pause. “I just came over to answer the telephone,” said Stephen.
“Do you think,” said Jane hesitantly, “that I could go upstairs?”
“I’ll take you up,” said Stephen.
Side by side they mounted the staircase in silence. In the upper hall Jane was vaguely conscious of a faint, penetrating odour. It was almost imperceptible, but Jane recognized it at once. The great round red gas tanks on Division Street smelled that way, sometimes, when you bicycled past them.
The door to Flora’s mother’s room was closed. As they went by, Jane stumbled over something in the darkness—something small and soft and living. Jane knew, instantly, before she looked, that it was Folly, the pug, lying on the hall carpet, his little wrinkled muzzle pressed tightly against the crack of the door.
“Oh—Stephen!” she said faintly. Folly seemed terribly pathetic. It was incredible to think that little, old, rheumatic Folly was living, when Flora’s mother—Flora’s brilliant, young, gay mother—was dead. Irrevocably dead.
Stephen pressed Jane’s hand in the darkness. Then she saw the bathroom door. There was a Chinese screen drawn around it, but Jane could see the splintered panels over the top. In the hushed order of that silent corridor, those broken, battered bits of wood assaulted the eye with the brutality of a blow.
Stephen paused before Flora’s door. Jane tapped lightly.
“Flora,” she said, “it’s Jane.”
“Come in, Jane,” said Flora’s tearful voice. Jane opened the door and closed it again upon Stephen Carver.
Flora was sitting up in her little brass bed, surrounded with pillows. She looked incredibly childlike and appealing, with her long yellow hair falling around her little tear-blanched face and the great tear-stained circles under her wide blue eyes. She held out her arms to Jane. Jane hugged her passionately.
“Flora,” she said, “do you know how I loved your mother?” Jane was a little shocked to observe how easily she had slipped into the past tense. Flora’s mother seemed dreadfully dead, already.
“Everyone loved her,” said Flora brokenly.
“Everyone,” thought Jane, “but one. And that one—”
Jane found herself wondering, with the horrible curiosity of Isabel, if Flora knew.
“She never came to, at all,” said Flora presently. “Her—her heart had stopped. I—I don’t see how it could have happened. She was locked in the bathroom. She—she must have fainted.”
Jane’s horrible curiosity was satisfied.
She sat quite still on the
