And then quite suddenly and quite securely it fitted into the poisoned map that his mind made. Next to it came the empty house. How it fitted he did not quite know, but he felt the edge to be flush and firm.
And then for a moment he cast the map aside, telling himself, as was indeed true, that he was doing Lucia a hideous injustice. This, at any rate, was causeless—absolutely causeless. Whatever she did he turned into edible form for his poisonous brood: last night it was the fact that she did not want Charlie's companionship that was capable to him of only one explanation; to-day the fact that she did appeared equally suggestive. Again, that he should go down to Ashdown when Lucia was there fevered him; now, that he should not go to Ashdown had the same effect. Frankly he acknowledged to himself the unreasonableness and the meanness of his thoughts. But he could not expel them; they came back and back, swarming like brown evil flies over carrion.
Three days later Lucia was sitting over her fire in her bedroom before it was time to dress for dinner. There was a huge party in the house, a party that should have been very amusing—at any rate, the same party, more or less, had amused her immensely on other occasions. All the right people were there, and, what made more difference, there were none of the wrong ones. But Lucia, in the twenty-four hours that had elapsed since she arrived, had not been in the least degree amused. Yet she had not been bored; her thoughts had been desperately busy.
It was Tuesday. On Friday night she was to go up to town, join Edgar at the Grosvenor Hotel, and go off with him next day. They would cruise in the Mediterranean; then they would be busy with their shooting-parties, and before they were over Maud and her husband would have started for St. Moritz. It would be weeks—months—before she saw Charlie again, and there were things she must tell him—he must know the reason for her guardedness, else he might think she wanted to break with him. It was that thought which was intolerable, which obsessed her, which prevented her enjoyment of this thoroughly congenial society. And it never left her; her laugh would wither in mid-air, dropping dead. She would be in the middle of a sentence, and the sentence would go lopped and maimed. And people, she felt sure, were beginning to notice these things. She was not herself; anybody could see that, and what lay between her and herself was this difficulty: she could not conceive how, with the prudence she was
