THE RETURN
Her book lay open on a table: she shut it with a sense of desolation. It would never be finished now, it was too good a thing to read while they were in the house; to be punctuated by her petulant insistent chatter, his little shuffling, furtive steps. If only this room were all her own: inviolable. She could leave the rest of the house to them, to mar and bully, if she had only a few feet of silence of her own, to exclude the world from, to build up in something of herself.
If she did not go upstairs now Mrs. Tottenham would call her, and that, in this room, would be more than she could bear. Vaguely she pictured headlines: "'Laurels' Murder Mystery. Bodies in a Cistern. Disappearance of Companion." The darkness was all lurid with her visionary crime.
Mrs. Tottenham had not been round the house. She did not say the rooms smelt mouldy, and she left the curtain-draperies alone.
Lydia wondered deeply.
"Did you know Sevenoaks?"
The question abashed her. What had Mrs. Tottenham to do with Sevenoaks?
42
