“Isn’t he a beauty? The Prince gave him to me down at Nice the other day–but he’s perfectly awful,” she confessed, beaming intimately on her visitor. In the roseate penumbra of the bed-curtains she presented to Anna’s startled gaze an odd chromo-like resemblance to Sophy Viner, or a suggestion, rather, of what Sophy Viner might, with the years and in spite of the powder-puff, become. Larger, blonder, heavier- featured, she yet had glances and movements that disturbingly suggested what was freshest and most engaging in the girl; and as she stretched her bare plump arm across the bed she seemed to be pulling back the veil from dingy distances of family history.
“Do sit down, if there’s a place to sit on,” she cordially advised; adding, as Anna took the edge of a chair hung with miscellaneous raiment: “My singing takes so much time that I don’t get a chance to walk the fat off–that’s the worst of being an artist.”
Anna murmured an assent. “I hope it hasn’t inconvenienced you to see me; I told Mr. Birch–”
“Mr. who?” the recumbent beauty asked; and then: “Oh, JIMMY!” she faintly laughed, as if more for her own enlightenment than Anna’s.
The latter continued eagerly: “I understand from Mrs. Farlow that your sister was with you, and I ventured to come up because I wanted to ask you when I should have a chance of finding her.”
Mrs. McTarvie-Birch threw back her head with a long stare. “Do you mean to say the idiot at the door didn’t tell you? Sophy went away last night.”
“Last night?” Anna echoed. A sudden terror had possessed her. Could it be that the girl had tricked them all and gone with Owen? The idea was incredible, yet it took such hold of her that she could hardly steady her lips to say: “The porter did tell me, but I thought perhaps he was mistaken. Mrs. Farlow seemed to think that I should find her here.”
“It was all so sudden that I don’t suppose she had time to let the Farlows know. She didn’t get Mrs. Murrett’s wire till yesterday, and she just pitched her things into a trunk and rushed—-”
“Mrs. Murrett?”
“Why, yes. Sophy’s gone to India with Mrs. Murrett; they’re to meet at Brindisi,” Sophy’s sister said with a calm smile.
Anna sat motionless, gazing at the disordered room, the pink bed, the trivial face among the pillows.
Mrs. McTarvie-Birch pursued: “They had a fearful kick-up last spring-I daresay you knew about it–but I told Sophy she’d better lump it, as long as the old woman was willing to…As an artist, of course, it’s perfectly impossible for me to have her with me…”
“Of course,” Anna mechanically assented.
Through the confused pain of her thoughts she was hardly aware that Mrs. Birch’s explanations were still continuing. “Naturally I didn’t altogether approve of her going back to that beast of a woman. I said all I could…I told her she was a fool to chuck up such a place as yours. But Sophy’s restless–always was–and she’s taken it into her head she’d rather travel…”
Anna rose from her seat, groping for some formula of leave- taking. The pushing back of her chair roused the white dog’s smouldering animosity, and he drowned his mistress’s further confidences in another outburst of hysterics. Through the tumult Anna signed an inaudible farewell, and Mrs. Birch, having momentarily succeeded in suppressing her pet under a pillow, called out: “Do come again! I’d love to sing to you.”
Anna murmured a word of thanks and turned to the door. As she opened it she heard her hostess crying after her: Jimmy!” she faintly laughed, as if more for her own being no response from the person summoned: “do tell him he must go and call the lift for you!”