Chapter 37 - Page 2

in all things--except, perhaps, in those small matters
sacred to femininity, which concerned her personal adornment--"he knew
best." She was consequently prepared to extend a warm welcome to her
young visitor, and, for her husband's sake, to do as much to make her
visit pleasant as if she had been the lawful daughter of her husband's
late friend and client, Colonel Eden.

Nevertheless, after the days she had spent with Mary, Fan did not find
Mrs. Travers' society exhilarating. The lady had given up walking, except
a very little in the garden, but on most days she went out for carriage
exercise in the morning, after Mr. Travers had gone to town. At two
o'clock the ladies would lunch, after which Fan would be alone until the
five o'clock tea, when her hostess would reappear in a gay dress, and a
lovely carmine bloom on her cheeks--the result of her refreshing noonday
slumbers. After tea they would spend an hour together in the garden
talking and reading. Mrs. Travers, having bad eyesight, accepted Fan's
offer to read to her. She read nothing but periodicals--short social
sketches, smart paragraphs, jokes, and occasionally a tale, if very
short, so that Fan found her task a very light one. She had _The World,
Truth, The Whitehall Review, The Queen_ and _The Lady's
Pictorial_ every week; and in the last-named paper Fan read out a
little sketch--one of a series called "Eastern Idylls"--which she liked
better than anything else for its graceful style and delicate pathos. So
much did it please her, that she looked up the back numbers of the paper,
and read all the sketches in them, each relating some little domestic
East End incident or tale, pathetic or humorous, or both, with scenes and
characters lightly drawn, yet with such skilful touches, and put so
clearly before the mind, that it was impossible not to believe that these
pictures were from life.

At half-past six Mr. Travers would return from town, and at seven they
dined, sitting long at table; and afterwards, if there were friends,
there would be a rubber of whist. It was a quiet almost sleepy existence,
and Fan began to look forward with a little impatience to the end of her
fortnight, when she would be able to return to her friend. For Mary's
last words had been, "I shall not leave London without you." But she
first wished to hear the "strange story" Mr. Travers had promised to
tell, but about which he had spoken no word since her arrival. Every day
she was reminded of it, for in the dining-room was the portrait of her
father, painted, life-size, by a Royal Academician, and showing a
gentleman aged about thirty-five years, with a handsome oval face, grey
eyes, thin straight nose, and hair and well-trimmed moustache