these bronchial attacks. Then quite suddenly my poor brother-in-law got a telegram from his sister saying that—well, it was really a curiously worded telegram. One hardly knows how to repeat it, except that one makes allowances for foreigners. But, of course, it is all very odd to our English reserve on those subjects."
Lady St. Craye looked at her with wondering eyes.
"Yes!"
"I believe," said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans mournfully, "that the telegram said she had received the Last Sacraments, such as they are, of the Roman Catholic Church. Of course one is glad she had the consolations of her religion at the end; but it was a strange thing to put in a telegram, especially when the post-office people at Villetswood naturally know my brother-in-law quite well, and all about his relations. And it seems to me very reckless to have done all that anointing to an old lady ill with bronchitis; I dare say, if one knew the truth, it was probably the last straw," concluded Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, apparently with some confusion between the Last Sacraments of the Catholic Church and the ceremony of Baptism by immersion.
"Was that the only intimation, though?" asked Lady St. Craye after a slight pause.
"There was a second telegram, I believe, to say that she had passed away quite peacefully. Or, rather, since foreigners word these things very oddly, it just said that she had died that morning. Of course, poor Louis has gone straight over to Paris."
"He must let Zella stay on with us," said Lady St. Craye warmly. "She is a perfect darling, and so pretty."
Mrs. Lloyd-Evans recalled her hostess, by a grieved look, to the fact that such a remark ill-befitted the occasion.
Before Lady St. Craye could think of a more suitable one, Zella came in.
Her appearance hardly justified the suppressed emotion with which Mrs. Lloyd-Evans clasped her for a long moment with a sub-audible "My poor child!"
Zella had not been affected very deeply by the death of the old Baronne. It seemed perfectly natural to her that her grandmother, whom she regarded as aged in the extreme, should die, and her sympathy for pauvre tante Stéphanie had found ample vent in the graceful wording of a very prettily turned lettre de condoléance. Even her father's loss did not present itself to her as very real or vivid, since she knew that only youth can plumb the depths of suffering or attain to the heights of happiness, and that a capacity for feeling vanishes with the early twenties, leaving a matter-of-fact attitude of acceptance in its stead. From this point of view, therefore, Zefia had felt in no way disposed to admit of interference with the pleasantly self-absorbed train of thought induced in her by the St. Craye household, and in the depths of her heart regarded the advent of death as an ill-timed intrusion.
She had communicated her loss to Alison and her mother with a mingling of slight awe and chastened grief, but laying stress upon the lapse of years since she had seen the Baronne, and even feeling slightly struck by her own candour in not affecting a conventional grief which she could not feel.
Lady St. Craye had been affectionately sympathetic, and, on learning that Louis did not wish his daughter to accompany him to Paris, had warmly begged her to remain with her for the present, and neither she nor Alison had appeared to expect any excessive display of sorrow on the part of their visitor.
Consequently, it was with no sensations of gratitude that Zella heard the low, grief-stricken accents of her Aunt Marianne pouring out a consoling stream of resignation and tender reminiscences in Lady St. Craye's drawing-room.
Mrs. Lloyd-Evans had had time to say, "In the midst of life we are in death, darling, and one feels that this must remind you of those sad, sad days at Villetswood when your dear mother was taken from us Aunt Marianne could not help coming to you, dear, knowing how one feels these things at your age, or, indeed, at any age; for, as you know, it is a great grief to Uncle Henry and Aunt Marianne, too," before, to Zella's intense relief, Lady St. Craye slipped out of the room, murmuring that she knew Mrs. Lloyd-Evans and Zella would like a little talk together, and that, of course, Mrs. Lloyd-Evans must stay to luncheon. Without other spectators, Zella felt more able to cope with the rôle that was evidently assigned her.
She even shed a few quiet tears after Mrs. Lloyd-Evans had said with mild surprise: "You look better than I expected, dear, for I know it must have been a shock to you."
But it was no small relief to her when the peal of Swiss cow-bells, substituted by Alison for a gong, clanged through the house, and she exclaimed with a good deal more eagerness than she had meant to put into her voice: "There's luncheon, Aunt Marianne. You are staying, aren't you?"
Aunt Marianne gave a little start, as of one suddenly recalled from another plane, and for a moment Zella feared that her bereavement came under the heading of those in which "one does not think of one's own health or comfort, dear, and food would be impossible "; but Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, after a moment's debate with herself, apparently decided otherwise.
"Come then, Zella dear," she said resignedly. "One does not want to disappoint poor Lady St. Craye or hurt her feelings, and I dare say she meant very kindly in aslung me to stay for luncheon."
Perhaps Lady St. Craye thought her kindness excessive, for luncheon was a cheerless meal. Zella was as self-conscious as youth always is in the combined presence of friends and relations, to each of whom she had half unconsciously presented a totally different aspect of herself, and Mrs. Lloyd-Evans determinedly led the conversation into a depressed minor key and sustained it there.
Alison, to whom unpunctuality at meals always symbolized a victory of the spirit over the flesh, came in twenty minutes late, just as Mrs. Lloyd-Evans observed dejectedly:
"No, thank you, nothing cold. One must be reasonable and eat, of course, and I am very glad dear little Zella is so sensible, but it does go against the grain at such a time."
Zella, who had been flattering herself that her very modest helping of chicken came fully within the limits allowed by grief, coloured angrily, and felt bound to refuse the cold tongue which she would have liked.
"Here is Alison!" exclaimed Lady St. Craye in the glad tone in which she always acclaimed her daughter's entry.
Alison looked repression at her mother, shook hands from the elevation of her five foot ten inches with Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, and laid a kindly patronizing hand on Zella's shoulder as she passed to her place.
Mrs. Lloyd-Evans's gloom did not allow of any further concession to social conventions than an unsmiling inclination of the head, and she pursued the mournful tenor of her conversational way unmoved by Alison's hostile gaze.
"One feels," she observed, absently crumbling her bread, "that it is all so sad for the poor daughter. One ought really to pity those that are left, not those that are gone, don't you think?"
"Yes," said Lady St. Craye gently, and looking down at the table.
"There is no such thing as death," said Alison, in a voice made carefully matter-of-fact.
Zella wished rather uncomfortably that she did not know the writings of Maeterlinck to be Alison's most recent discovery.
"That would be a most impious thought if it was held in earnest," said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans firmly, "when we are distinctly told, both by a Higher Authority and by the sad things we see all round us every day, that in the midst of life we are in death."
"Ah, your grand old prophets left many phrases of that sort to survive them; but we of to-day have learnt to read a deeper, truer meaning into their words, have we not?" said Alison, smiling at Zella as at a soul of similar
