DARK HESTER
burned as, not waiting for the lift, she had run down the steep, echoing stone staircase. Things, perhaps, were better for women now;—because of Hester and her kind. And as she paused thus, looking back into the past, she saw Hester approaching her from across the green.
Hester had just come down from The Crofts and was evidently arrayed for the tea-party in her best dark blue coat and skirt. She wore a red silk jumper and a small red hat, and, among the geese and ducks and care-free dogs, advanced with steady deliberation. Monica stood still at her gate, fixing her with a guarded eye. Her instinct that morning in meeting Captain Ingpen had been well justified; she had waited for him to speak first. She would wait for Hester to speak first now.
There was no hesitation in Hester’s demeanour and, as far as Monica could perceive, no calculation. Her eyes were set in mauve circles, almost as though she had wept—but Monica could not imagine that Hester had been weeping—and the ageing lines that ran along her cheeks were apparent and seemed to drag at the corners of her mouth with a bitter savour. And what she said at once—what she had come to say—was: ‘I am very sorry about yesterday, Monica. Clive told me that you felt I
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