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Updated: May 16, 2025
He omitted to mention the date of this bereavement, having always a delicate sense of what did and did not concern his hearers. The decease of the lady who had for a brief period been Lady Hugh Urquhart, might be supposed to be of a certain interest to her stepson; that of her second husband was a private family affair of the Margerisons.
Peter said he thought it was very nice. That Rhoda certainly heard, and she looked at him with a curious expression, in which hope predominated. Was this brother of the Margerisons another fool, worse than her? Would he perhaps make her folly shine almost like wisdom by comparison? She exchanged a glance with Vyvian; it was extraordinarily sweet to be able to do that; so many glances had been exchanged
There remained the Margerisons; Peter, with his friendly smile and gentle companionableness; Hilary, worried and weary and hardly noticing her unobtrusive presence; Silvio, Caterina, and Illuminato sucking gingerbread and tumbling off the rack, and Peggy, on whose broad shoulder Rhoda suddenly laid her head and wept, all through the Mont Cenis tunnel.
"Scamps; scamps all," muttered Lord Evelyn. "Deserve all they get, and more. People like the Margerisons an't worth helping. They'd best go under at once; best go under. Swindlers and scamps, the lot of them. I daresay the woman's stories are half lies; of course, they want money, but it's probably only to spend on nonsense. Why can't they keep themselves, like decent people?"
As two years ago the Margerisons had been thrown roughly out of the profession of artistic experts, so now the doors of the boarding-house world were shut upon them. Boarders are like that; intensely respectable. All the loosed dogs of ill-fortune seemed to be yelping at the Margerisons' heels at once. Hilary, when he recovered from his influenza and went out to look for jobs, couldn't find one.
They had talked together about all manner of things, being excellent friends, but only once so far about Lucy's cousin Peter. Once had been too much, Lucy had found. The Margerisons were a tabooed subject with Lord Evelyn Urquhart. Denis shrugged his shoulders over it. "They did him brown, you see," he explained, in his light, casual way. "Uncle Evelyn can't forgive that.
"I see that we get a little more destitute every day." It was true. Every day the Margerisons seemed to lose something more. To-night Peter had lost something he could ill afford to part with another degree of Denis Urquhart's regard. That seemed to be falling from him bit by bit; perhaps that was why he felt so cold.
In the second, he was not an English flunkey, and not a snob. He was no more a snob than the Margerisons were, or Lord Evelyn himself. He deposited them at the Palace back door, politely saluted, and slipped away down the shadowy water-street. Hilary and Peter stepped up two water-washed steps to the green door, and Peggy opened it from within.
Hilary looked pale and tired; he had been settling his dead uncle's affairs for the last week. The Margerisons' uncle had not been a lovable man; Hilary could not pretend that he had loved him. Peter had, as far as he had been permitted to do so; Peter found it possible to be attached to most of the people he came across; he was a person of catholic sympathies and gregarious instincts.
There was a growing feeling among the boarders that no self-respecting person could remain with people whose financial affairs were in the precarious condition of the Margerisons' people who couldn't pay the butcher, and lived on ill-founded expectations of subsidies.
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