will grab at the money and abuse you all the more afterwards.’
‘Well,’ said Katherine, ‘let them if they like. We all have our own ways of enjoying ourselves. They were, after all, Mrs Harfield’s only relatives, and though they despised her as a poor relation and paid no attention to her when she was alive, it seems to me unfair that they should be cut off with nothing.’
She carried her point, though the lawyer was still unwilling, and she presently went out into the streets of London with a comfortable assurance that she could spend money freely and make what plans she liked for the future. Her first action was to visit the establishment of a famous dressmaker.
A slim, elderly Frenchwoman, rather like a dreaming duchess, received her, and Katherine spoke with a certain naïveté.
‘I want, if I may, to put myself in your hands. I have been very poor all my life and know nothing about clothes, but now I have come into some money and want to look really well dressed.’
The Frenchwoman was charmed. She had an artist’s temperament, which had been soured earlier in the morning by a visit from an Argentine meat queen, who had insisted on having those models least suited to her flamboyant type of beauty. She scrutinized Katherine with keen, clever eyes. ‘Yes—yes, it will be a pleasure. Mademoiselle has a very good figure; for her the simple lines will be best. She is also très anglaise. Some people it would offend them if I said that, but Mademoiselle no. Une belle Anglaise, there is no style more delightful.’
The demeanour of a dreaming duchess was suddenly put off. She screamed out directions to various mannequins. ‘Clothilde, Virginie, quickly, my little ones, the little tailleur gris clair and the robe de soirée “soupir d’automne”. Marcelle, my child, the little mimosa suit of crêpe de chine.’
It was a charming morning. Marcelle, Clothilde, Virginie, bored and scornful, passed slowly round, squirming and wriggling in the time-honoured fashion of mannequins. The Duchess stood by Katherine and made entries in a small notebook.
‘An excellent choice, Mademoiselle. Mademoiselle has great goût. Yes, indeed. Mademoiselle cannot do better than those little suits if she is going to the Riviera, as I suppose, this winter.’
‘Let me see that evening dress once more,’ said Katherine—‘the pinky mauve one.’
Virginie appeared, circling slowly.
‘That is the prettiest of all,’ said Katherine, as she surveyed the exquisite draperies of mauve and grey and blue. ‘What do you call it?’
‘Soupir d’automne; yes, yes, that is truly the dress of Mademoiselle.’
What was there in these words that came back to Katherine with a faint feeling of sadness after she had left the dressmaking establishment?
‘“Soupir d’automne; that is truly the dress of Mademoiselle.”’ Autumn, yes, it was autumn for her. She who had never known spring or summer, and would never know them now. Something she had lost never could be given to her again. These years of servitude in St Mary Mead—and all the while life passing by.
‘I am an idiot,’ said Katherine. ‘I am an idiot. What do I want? Why, I was more contented a month ago than I am now.’
She drew out from her handbag the letter she had received that morning from Lady Tamplin. Katherine was no fool. She understood the nuances of that letter as well as anybody and the reason of Lady Tamplin’s sudden show of affection towards a long-forgotten cousin was not lost upon her. It was for profit and not for pleasure that Lady Tamplin was so anxious for the company of her dear cousin. Well, why not? There would be profit on both sides.
‘I will go,’ said Katherine.
She was walking down Piccadilly at the moment, and turned into Cook’s to clinch the matter then and there. She had to wait for a few minutes. The man with whom the clerk was engaged was also going to the Riviera. Everyone, she felt, was going. Well, for the first time in her life, she, too, would be doing what ‘everybody’ did.
The man in front of her turned abruptly, and she stepped into his place. She made her demand to the clerk, but at the same time half of her mind was busy with something else. That man’s face—in some vague way it was familiar to her. Where had she seen him before? Suddenly she remembered. It was in the Savoy outside her room that morning. She had collided with him in the passage. Rather an odd coincidence that she should run into him twice in a day. She glanced over her shoulder, rendered uneasy by something, she knew not what. The man was standing in the doorway looking back at her. A cold shiver passed over Katherine; she had a haunting sense of tragedy, of doom impending…
Then she shook the impression from her with her usual good sense and turned her whole attention to what the clerk was saying.
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