Married women -- Fiction; Staffordshire (England) -- Fiction
They drove into the courtyard of the select and austere establishment
where John Stanway had brought his wife on her wedding journey. Leonora
found that it had scarcely changed; the dark entrance lounge presented
the same appearance now as it had done more than twenty years ago; it
had the same air of receiving visitors with condescension; the whole
street was the same. She grew thoughtful; and Harry's witticisms, as he
ceremoniously superintended their induction into the place, served only
to deepen the shadow in her heart.
'Any letters for me?' she asked the hall porter, loitering behind while
Millicent and Harry went into the _salle à manger_.
'What name, madam? No, madam.'
But during luncheon, to which Harry stayed, a flunkey approached bearing
a telegram on silver. 'In a moment,' she thought, 'I shall know when we
are to meet.' And she trembled with apprehension. The flunkey, however,
gave the telegram to Millicent, who accepted it as though she had been
accepting telegrams at the hands of flunkeys all her life.
'_Miss_ Stanway,' she smiled superiorly with her chin forward,
perceiving the look on Leonora's face. She tore the envelope. 'Lewis
says I am to go to-day at four, instead of to-morrow. Hooray! the sooner
it's over, the sooner to sleep, though the harbour bar be mo--oaning.
Ma, that's the very time you have to meet Rose at the hospital. Harry,
you shall take me.'
Leonora would have preferred that Harry and Millicent should not go
alone together to see Mr. Louis Lewis. But she could not bring herself
to break the appointment with Rose, who was extremely sensitive; nor
could she well inform Harry, at this stage of his close intimacy with
the family, that she no longer cared to entrust Milly to his charge.
She left the hotel before the other two, because she had further to
drive. The hansom had scarcely got into the street when she instructed
the driver to return.
'Of course you will settle nothing definitely with Mr. Lewis,' she said
to Milly. 'Tell him I wish to see him first.'
'Oh, mother!' the girl cried, pouting.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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