The yellow book: an illustrated quarterly (2.1894)

148

Three Stories

engaged to be married, and was therefore free to do anything
she liked. After a visit of half an hour Huddieston went.

Janet rang the bell, and feit a little guilty as she took up the
open book directly her visitor had gone. She did not know quite
why, but she was dissatisfied. However, in a moment or two she
was deep in the excitement of Asphodel.

She read on for a couple of hours, and then she heard the
carriage drive up to the door. She heard her father come into
the house and go to Iiis consulting-room, then walk upstairs to his
bedroom, and she knew that in a few minutes he would be down
in the drawing-room to talk for a quarter of an hour before dinner.
When she heard him on the landing, she put away her book ;
Gertrude met him just at the door ; they both came in together,
and then they all three chatted. But instead of feeling in a con-
tented mood, because she had read comfortably, as she had intended
all the afternoon, Janet was dissatisfied, as if the afternoon had
slipped by without being enjoyed, wasted over the exciting
novel.

And towards the end of dinner her thoughts feil back on an
old trouble which had been dully threatening her. Gertrude
was her father's favourite ; gay and pretty, she had never been
difficult. Janet was more silent, could not amuse her father and
make him laugh, and he was not fond of her. She would find
still more difKculty when Gertrude was married, and she was
left alone with him. His health was failing, and he was growing
very cantankerous. She dreaded the prospect, and already the
doctor was moaning to Gerty about her leaving, and she was
making him laugh for the last time over the very cause of his
dejection. Not that he would have retarded her marriage by a
day ; he was extremely proud of her engagement to the son of the
great Lady Beamish.

That