The chamber had been hung with "blacks" for a twelvemonth, Reuben told her,
as he escorted her over the house, and unlocked the doors of disused rooms.
The tall bedstead with its red and yellow stamped velvet curtains and
carved ebony posts looked like an Indian temple. One might expect to
see Buddha squatting on the embroidered counterpane--the work of half a
lifetime. When the curtains were drawn back, a huge moth flew out of the
darkness, and spun and wheeled round the room with an awful humming noise,
and to the superstitious mind might have suggested a human soul embodied in
this phantasmal greyness, with power of sound in such excess of its bulk.
"Sir John never used the room after her ladyship's death," Reuben
explained, "though 'tis the best bed-chamber. He has always slept in the
blue room, which is at the furthest end of the gallery from the room that
has been prepared for madam. We call that the garden room, and it is mighty
pretty in summer."
In summer! How far it seemed to summer-time in Angela's thoughts! What a
long gulf of nothingness to be bridged over, what a dull level plain to
cross, before June and the roses could come round again, bringing with them
the memory of last summer; and the days she had lived under the same roof
with Fareham, and the evenings when they had sat in the same room, or
loitered on the terrace, pausing now and then beside an Italian vase of
gaudy flowers to look at this or that, or to watch the mob on the river;
and those rare golden days, like that at Sayes Court, which she had spent
in some excursion with Fareham and Henriette.
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