The Black Cabinet by Patricia Wentworth Page A

herself from her own thoughts and plans. Something must have happened to make Rose look like this, so flushed and tremulous.
    â€œWhat is it?” she asked. “Tell me at once, ducky!”
    Rose came nearer, flung an arm about Chloe’s shoulders, and hid her face in Chloe’s neck.
    â€œYou mustn’t mind—you must promise not to mind,” she whispered.
    â€œWhat is it?”
    â€œEdward has to go out a month earlier, and—and—oh, Chloe, we’ll have to be married next week; and I do so hate leaving you.”
    Chloe felt a hot tear go trickling down the back her neck. She put motherly arms about Rose and hugged her.
    Danesborough seemed nearer.

Chapter IX
    Chloe stood on the terrace at Danesborough, and watched the sun go down into a band of mist. Rose was married and gone, and Maxton seemed very far away. She had been at Danesborough for nearly a week. After a short interview with Mr. Dane, Ally had fairly pressed holiday upon her, and she had gone off with the Gressons in a mood between shrinking and excitement.
    Chloe saw the sun grow redder and rounder in the fog. The air was very still; the sky a faint, dusky blue, fast changing into grey; mist rising everywhere. From where she stood, the ground fell away in five terraces. The mist was rising against them like a tide. Away to the right, the great mass of leafless woods curtained by the dusk. To the left, a hazy gleam from the lake in the hollow.
    Chloe remembered it all so green and smiling in the sunshine. With that child’s memory which crowds all its happy recollections upon a single canvas she had pictured Danesborough as the old folk-tales picture Avalon, a place always green and always sunny, where roses, lilies, daffodils, and irises bloomed for ever, and the rosy apple-blossoms broke from boughs weighed down with ruddy apples—a Danesborough that never was; a child’s imagining; a child’s dream. But Chloe missed her dream and was sad for it. The real Danesborough gave her nothing to take its place. The woods were leafless, and the gardens slept.
    She turned and went into the lighted house, and in the house met again that something that had driven her out upon the terrace. Chloe did not know what this something was; but it met her at every turn.
    Mrs. Wroughton, the secretary’s wife, crossed the hall as Chloe came in—a little faded woman with hair like straw, and a mouth that was always slightly open. Chloe never saw her without wondering how the red-faced, jovial Mr. Wroughton had ever come to marry such a frightened wisp of a creature.
    â€œOh, Miss Dane, you’ve been out.”
    â€œYes,” said Chloe.
    â€œIt’s—it’s getting quite dark.”
    â€œYes.”
    Emily Wroughton’s trick of making banal and self-evident remarks had become almost as irritating to Chloe as it obviously was to Emily’s husband.
    â€œBut milder—I really think it is milder—only foggy—there seems to be quite a fog—so autumnal! I believe Mr. Dane was asking for you just now. Have you seen him?”
    Mr. Dane himself opened the drawing-room door as she spoke. He stood back when he saw Chloe, with a gesture that invited her to join him. When she had come into the drawing-room, he shut the door.
    â€œAren’t you cold?” he asked. “You should have had a coat.”
    â€œI’m never cold. Rose used to get quite angry about it. She said it was dreadfully aggravating.”
    â€œYes, I can understand that. I am a cold person myself.” He paused, and then said with some abruptness, “Do you remember this room all? I’ve changed it as little as possible.”
    â€œI don’t know,” said Chloe. “It’s funny, but I remember all the outside things so much better than I do the house.”
    â€œIf you come to live here, you can do anything you like with it.” There was no expression Mitchell Dane’s