There were motives now, behind that smile, that softness; motives behind the flattery of Augustine, the blandness towards Sir Hugh, the visit to herself. Some of the motives were, perhaps, all kindness: Lady Elliston had always been kind; she had always been a binder of wounds, a dispenser of punctual sunlight; she was one of the world's powerfully benignant great ladies; committees clustered round her; her words of assured wisdom sustained and guided ecclesiastical and political organisations; one must be benignant, in an altruistic modern world, if one wanted to rule. It was not a cynical nun who gazed; Lady Elliston was kind and Lady Elliston loved power; simply, without a sense of blame, Amabel drew her conclusions.
There were now lapses in Lady Elliston's fluency. Her eyes rested contemplatively on Amabel; it was evident that she wanted to see Amabel alone. This motive was so natural a one that, although Sir Hugh seemed determined, at the risk of losing his train, to stay till the last minute, he, too, felt, at last, its pressure.
His wife saw him go with a sense of closing mists. Augustine, now more considerate, followed him. She was left facing her guest.
Only Lady Elliston could have kept the moment from being openly painful and even Lady Elliston could not pretend to find it an easy one; but she did not err on the side of too much tact. It was so sweetly, so gravely that her eyes rested for a long moment of silence on her old friend, so quietly that they turned away from her rising flush, that Amabel felt old gratitudes mingling with old distrusts.
"What a sad room this is," said Lady Elliston, looking about it. "Is it just as you found it, Amabel?"
"Yes, almost. I have taken away some things."
"I wish you would take them all away and put in new ones. It might be made into a very nice room; the panelling is good. What it needs is Jacobean furniture, fine old hangings, and some bits of glass and porcelain here and there."
"I suppose so." Amabel's eyes followed Lady Elliston's. "I never thought of changing anything."
Lady Elliston's eyes turned on hers again. "No: I suppose not," she said.
She seemed to find further meanings in the speech and took it up again with: "I suppose not. It's strange that we should never have met in all these years, isn't it."