The Regency by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles Page A

comfort and seclusion to men who wished to escape from their wives, their duns, their responsibilities, or their sorrows. She thought of James drinking himself to forgetfulness there once a week during the years of his marriage to Mary Ann, and was sad at the waste of it all.
    She remembered the terrible anguish she had suffered when she first heard that James and Mary Ann had a son. Well, Mary Ann was dead, and the boy was dead; and now she was going to visit another woman who had borne James a son.
    The carriage halted outside the imposing stone frontage of Skelwith House. Like so many York houses, it was an old building with a modern façade, added not only to improve the look of the property, but to comply with the new fire regulations: inside, she knew, it would present the crooked, humane proportions of a mediaeval frame house. Now that the carriage was halted, Héloïse could hear the cathedral bells rocking the air above the roofs, the top layer in a cacophany of sounds which astonished her anew every time she came into the city.
    The footman stepped down and rapped at the door, and when the servant answered, came to open the carriage door for his mistress, and let down the step.
    ‘ Come back for me in a quarter of an hour,' Héloïse said. The Skelwith servant was waiting, holding the house door open for her. She thrust her hands into her muff, took a deep breath, and stepped forward, inwardly rehearsing her opening speech.
    A few moments later she was being shewn into a parlour on the first floor. It was a low-ceilinged room at the back of the house, whose small casement windows let in little light; but there was a bright fire burning in a modern hearth, and Mrs Skelwith rose from a chair pulled up beside it to meet her.
    ‘ I hope you will forgive me for calling on you without leaving my card first,' Héloïse said at once, 'but as I believe you are an old friend of the family, I hoped you would not think it an impertinence.'
    ‘ Not at all, Lady Morland. I'm very glad you did call,' Mrs Skelwith said. The words were hospitable, but the tone was unemphatic. 'Indeed, I should have called on you after your wedding, but I'm afraid I'm a sad invalid now, and rarely go out, except to church, so I hope you will forgive me. Won't you sit down?’
    Héloïse sat down in the chair opposite and looked at her properly for the first time. Why, she's quite old, was the first thought that occurred. The former Mary Loveday was a thin woman in whose face any youthful beauty she may have possessed had been extinguished by years and unhappiness. There were unbecoming shadows around her eyes, two lines of discontent drew down her mouth corners, and her skin had the dry and unnourished look of a woman without a lover. Her hair was hidden by a cap whose lack of trimming was almost defiant; her gown was of good material, but of a sober brown, and plain except for some narrow black velvet edging; and she wore a fine cashmere shawl round her shoulders as if for warmth, rather than for ornament.
    Was this the woman James had loved? Héloïse thought in astonishment. And yet, perhaps she might once have been pretty. Why was she so sad? Had she really loved James so much? But no, surely no-one could waste their whole life in regretting something they could never have. She thought guiltily about her own long exile from his arms, all the years when he was married to Mary Ann, and felt a brief kinship with Mrs Skelwith. But then, she thought, I never mourned and brooded and shut myself away like this. I tried to live my life and love God, and I almost married. The room was comfortably furnished with many signs of wealth; and a wealthy widow could always marry, if she had a mind.
    But that only brought her back to the unhappy suspicion that perhaps this woman was in permanent mourning for James. The silence was beginning to be uncomfortable to Héloïse, and since Mrs Skelwith did not seem to feel obliged to initiate conversation, she said,