The Crow stayed on after all the other guests had left. He knew his
hostess wished to talk to him.
It had begun to pour with rain, and the dripping streets held out no
inducement to them to go out.
They pulled up their two comfortable arm-chairs to the sparkling wood
fire, and then Colonel Lowerby said: "You look sad, Queen Anne. Tell me about it."
"Yes, I am sad," said Anne. "The position is so hopeless. Hector loves
her--loves her really--and I do not wonder at it; and she seems just
everything that one could wish for him. A thousand times above Morella
in intellect and understanding. All the things Hector and I like she
sees at once. No need of explaining to her, as one has to to mother and
Morella always."
"Yes," said the Crow. He did not argue with her as usual.
"It seems so fearful to think of her forever bound to that dreadful old
grocer, whom she treats with so much deference and gentleness. The whole
thing has made me sad. Hector is perfectly miserable; and, do you know,
they are going to Beechleigh for Whitsuntide. Sir Patrick Fitzgerald is
her uncle--and, of course, Hector is going, too, and--"
She did not finish her sentence. Her voice died away in a pathetic note
as she gazed into the fire.
The Crow fidgeted; he had been devoted to Anne since she was a child of
ten, and he hated to see her troubled.
"Look here," he said. "I investigated her thoroughly at luncheon, and I
don't often make a mistake, do I?"
"No," said Anne. "Well--?"
"Well, she appeared to me to have some particular quality of
sweetness--you were right about her looking like an angel--and I think
she has got an angel's nature more or less; and when people are really
like that there is some one up above looks after them, and I don't think
we need worry much--you and I."
"Dear old Crow!" said Anne; "you do comfort me. But all the same, angel
or not, Hector is so attractive--and he is a man, you know, not one of
these anæmic, artistic, æsthetic things we see about so often now; and
thrown together like that--how on earth will they be able to help
themselves?"
The Crow was silent.
"You see," she continued, "beyond Morella, who is too absolutely
unalluring and respectable to come to harm anywhere, and Miss Linwood,
who only cares for bridge, there will hardly be another woman in the
house who has not got a lover, and the atmosphere of those things is
catching--don't you think so?"