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Updated: June 12, 2025
At Merriston her own situation had far too deeply absorbed her to leave her much attention for other people's. She had only noticed that Helen had been kind to Franklin. She suspected that it was now his ingenuousness that idealised Helen's tolerant kindness. But though her superior sophistication made a little touch of irony unavoidable, it was overwhelmed in the warm sense of gratitude.
She had lost the best train, which brought one to Merriston at tea-time Althea felt that Helen was the sort of person who would always lose the best train and after a tedious journey, with waits and changes at hot stations, she received her friend's kisses just as the dressing-bell for dinner sounded.
Physically, mentally, morally, Franklin's appreciations of her were deep; they were implied all through his letter, which was at once sober and eager. He said that he would stay at Merriston House for 'just as long as ever she would let him. Merely to be near her was to him, separated as he was from her for so much of his life, an unspeakable boon.
Merton, bland and determined in her latest London hat, was trying to find out whether Dorothy was a good enough match for Captain Merton, and it was pleasant to watch Mrs. Merton's subsequent discomfiture. At the same time, she felt that to follow in Mildred and Dorothy's triumphant wake was hardly what she had expected to do at Merriston House. Other things, too, were discouraging.
She knew that she could trust Gerald, that not for a moment would he permit himself a flirtation, and not for a moment fail to discriminate between admiration of the newcomer and devotion to herself; yet that the admiration had been sufficient to keep him on at Merriston, while the devotion took for granted the right to all sorts of marital neglects, was the fact that rankled.
Franklin picked his way over the road and rang the bell. This was his first stay in London since his departure from Merriston in August. He had been in Oxford, in Cambridge, in Birmingham, and Edinburgh. He had made friends and found many interests. The sense of scientific links between his own country and England had much enlarged his consciousness of world-citizenship.
'Nicer than eau rougie; I'm afraid she's eau rougie. 'Eau rougie may be nice, too, if one is tired and thirsty and needs mild refreshment, not altogether tasteless, and not at all intoxicating. She was certainly that to me. I was very much touched by her kindness. 'I shall be touched if she'll take Merriston. I'm fearfully hard up.
He talked away in his even, deliberate tones, while they drank tea and ate the hottest of muffins that stood in a covered dish on a brass tripod before the fire, and, while they talked, Miss Buchanan shot rather sharper glances at him from under her eyebrows. 'So you were at Merriston with Helen's Miss Jakes, she said, placing him. 'It made a match, that party, didn't it?
But fear predominated, and she forced herself to smile at him and to talk with him during the long drive, as though nothing had happened. Some days after Gerald had gone to Merriston, Franklin Kane received a little note from old Miss Buchanan. Helen, too, had gone to the country until Monday, as she had told Franklin when he had asked her to see some pictures with him on Saturday.
She looked at him, through her tears, and she knew him dearer to her in this resurrection than if her heart had never died to him; and, as he smiled at her, she, too, smiled back, tremblingly. Althea had not seen Gerald after the day that they came up from Merriston together.
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