“We can’t afford a fire in every room in the house,” Ethel explained.
“Doris has one to herself, Father has another, why should the rest of us have to share one? And anyhow, it’s Miss Mole who manages the money now, so you needn’t interfere!”
Miss Mole said nothing. This remark was probably intended as a jeer at Ethel, but, at least, it recognised her own existence, and a small smile must have come on her lips, for Wilfrid, entering at that moment, gave a clap of his hands and cried, “I’ve been wondering who you were ever since the happy hour when I first saw you and I’ve found out at last! Good evening, Mona Lisa. And don’t pretend you don’t know it’s you I’m talking to!”
Hannah looked up, then down. “It’s the long nose,” she said.
“Not a bit of it! It’s the secret smile. It’s all the wisdom of the world.”
Ethel was at a loss and seemed distressed. Ruth glanced up curiously for an instant and then bowed her head over her books and shielded her face with her hands.
“I can’t remember, for the moment,” Ethel said, “who Mona Lisa is.”
“A plain woman,” Hannah said.
“Then it’s very rude of Wilfrid,” there was relief in Ethel’s voice, “to say you’re like her.”
“On the contrary,” he said, “she may be plain, but she’s the most fascinating woman in the world.”
“Oh!” said Ethel blankly, and, after a moment’s fidgeting, she went out of the room.
Wilfrid nodded towards the door. “She’s gone to look her up in the dictionary!”
“No, she hasn’t,” Ruth spoke drily. “She’s gone up to her room and she’ll be opening and shutting drawers and banging things about for hours and I shan’t be able to go to sleep.” Her voice rose painfully. “Why haven’t you more sense?” she cried. “If you want to say things like that, why can’t you say them when she isn’t here?”
For the first time in weeks, Hannah forgot to be on her guard. A feeling of great mental weariness, of physical sickness, overcame her. The work slipped from her hands and she leaned back in her chair, shutting her eyes for a minute. It seemed to her horrible that Ruth should have so clear an insight into Ethel’s nature, and such bitter experience of it, that Ethel’s nature should be what it was. At Ruth’s age, Hannah had just gone to school in Upper Radstowe, with an intimate, frank knowledge of sexual processes, acquired by living on a farm, and was discovering that matters which her father had not scrupled to discuss in her presence were the subjects of sly whisperings in the school. The shock she suffered was different from the one to which Lilla piously laid claim, for Lilla was disgusted by physical details and Hannah was disgusted that anyone should consider them unclean, and she had been spared Ruth’s irritating contact with a mind subject, no doubt unconsciously, to the dictates of the body.
The crudity of this thought was distasteful to Miss Mole; the truth of it was worse. It was all very well to talk about civilization’s benefits to women and the preservation of their chastity, but what was happening to the minds of countless virgins who would never be anything else if they wished to be thought respectable? And while Ruth, like Ethel, was probably in ignorance of causes, she, too, was the unfortunate victim of effects.
Hannah sighed, and raised her eyes to find Ruth looking at her with a startled interest, and to wonder, under that look, whether her policy of self-effacement was the right one.
There was a fire in the drawing-room the next evening and there was a feeling of holiday in the house. Robert Corder was speaking at some meeting outside Radstowe and would not be back that night, and Hannah prepared a supper of surprises, such as they could not often have, for he was a hearty eater and needed solid fare. The family had the grace to recognise her efforts: Ethel pathetically did her best to pretend she had no grudge against Wilfrid or Miss Mole, Ruth openly enjoyed the food, Wilfrid forebore to flatter or to tease, and Hannah told herself that this was a very good imitation of a temporarily happy family.
When the meal was over Ruth was left in the dining-room to do her work, as she had desired, in peace, but Hannah lingered to repair the fire and gather up the mending which was her nightly occupation.
“Now you’ll be all right, won’t you?” she said cheerfully.
Ruth’s small, worried, face became more strained. “I didn’t say I wanted to be alone,” she said, and Hannah realized that her apparent sullenness was embarrassment. “I only wanted to be quiet. You sit so still. You’re not like Ethel. And she’ll be happier, alone, in there with Wilfrid.”
“And I’d rather stay here,” said Hannah, and neither of them spoke again until Ruth pushed her books aside and said she was going to bed.
“Good night,” Hannah said, with a cool nod and smile.
Ruth stooped to the fire and warmed her hands and then, with a little catch of her breath, she went away.
“I shall get her yet!” Hannah said to herself.
At some time during that night, she woke with a start. She had been dreaming a variation of a dream she often had. The scene was always the same. Somewhere in the neighbourhood of her cottage, in one of the low-ceilinged rooms or in the orchard, she was supremely happy, bewildered, or in great distress, and tonight trouble had been predominant. She thought the pain of it must have waked her, or her own cry, but as she lay, trying to compose herself, she heard a sound outside her door and the turning of the handle.
“Who is it?” she said and,
