CHAPTER XIX
One morning, just six days later, Lucia was alone in the sittingroom of the little suite that Edgar had taken for her and himself at the Grosvenor Hotel for the night before they had planned to leave England on the cruise in the Mediterranean. She had driven there in his motor from the Prince's Gate house, and had scarcely set foot outside it since. But many different people had come to see her here, and this morning she was expecting Maud, who had asked to be allowed to come to her. But the day outside was a curtain of the densest fog; it was probable that Maud might find it impossible to get here at all. And whether her coming or her keeping away was the least faceable Lucia hardly knew. To some people suspense is worse than the worst certainty; to others, those who would put off an unpleasant scene from day to day, suspense is the more bearable. All that Lucia knew was that the suspense she was in now was more dreadful than had been the moment when, a week ago, the frenzied knocking began, and she came downstairs to find Edgar. But—yes, suspense was the more bearable than the thought of what message Maud might bring. She would have made this great pall of darkness that overhung the town of double intensity: she would have willed that it should continue for ever—anything to delay Maud's arrival.
All the days of this last week, though they had been passed without change of surroundings, were absolutely distinct to her. That was due perhaps to the fact that very few things had happened, but that each was invested with an appalling significance. It was on Thursday night that she had come here, that Edgar's valet had brought up her bag for her to her room, and had undone the straps of it, and left her. That night she had not gone to bed at all, and in spite of the hideous shock and the scene that she had been through, she sat alert and tingling. It had happened; the worst possible had happened, and it was over. But life was not in the least over; it had but begun; she
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