No man believes that many-textured knowledge and skill — as a just idea of the solar system, or the power of painting flesh, or of reading written harmonies — can come late and of a sudden; yet many will not stick at believing that happiness can come at any day and hour solely by a new disposition of events; though there is nought less capable of a magical production than a mortal’s happiness, which is mainly a complex of habitual relations and dispositions not to be wrought by news from foreign parts, or any whirling of fortune’s wheel for one on whose brow Time has written legibly.

SOME days after Esther’s arrival at Transome Court, Denner, coming to dress Mrs Transome before dinner — a labour of love for which she had ample leisure now — found her mistress seated with more than ever of that marble aspect of self-absorbed suffering, which to the waiting-woman’s keen observation had been gradually intensifying itself during the past week. She had tapped at the door without having been summoned, and she had ventured to enter though she had heard no voice saying ‘Come in.’

Mrs Transome had on a dark warm dressing-gown, hanging in thick folds about her, and she was seated before a mirror which filled a panel from the floor to the ceiling. The room was bright with the light of the fire and of wax candles. For some reason, contrary to her usual practice, Mrs Transome had herself unfastened her abundant grey hair, which rolled backward in a pale sunless stream over her dark dress. She was seated before the mirror apparently looking at herself, her brow knit in one deep furrow, and her jewelled hands laid one above the other on her knee. Probably she had ceased to see the reflection in the mirror, for her eyes had the fixed wide-open look that belongs not to examination, but to reverie. Motionless in that way, her clear-cut features keeping distinct record of past beauty, she looked like an image faded, dried, and bleached by uncounted suns, rather than a breathing woman who had numbered the years as they passed, and had a consciousness within her which was the slow deposit of those ceaseless rolling years.’

Denner, with all her ingrained and systematic reserve, could not help showing signs that she was startled, when, peering from between her half-closed eyelids, she saw the motionless image in the mirror opposite to her as she entered. Her gentle opening of the door had not roused her mistress, to whom the sensations produced by Denner’s presence were as little disturbing as those of a favourite cat. But the slight cry, and the start reflected in the glass, were unusual enough to break the reverie: Mrs Transome moved, leaned back in her chair, and said —

‘So you’re come at last, Denner?’

‘Yes, madam; it is not late. I’m sorry you should have undone your hair yourself.’

‘I undid it to see what an old hag I am. These fine clothes you put on me, Denner, are only a smart shroud.’

‘Pray don’t talk so, madam. If there’s anybody doesn’t think it pleasant to look at you, so much the worse for them. For my part, I’ve seen no young ones fit to hold up your train. Look at your likeness down below; and though you’re older now, what signifies? I wouldn’t be Letty in the scullery because she’s got red cheeks. She mayn’t know she’s a poor creature, but I know it, and that’s enough for me: I know what sort of a dowdy draggletail she’ll be in ten years’ time. I would change with nobody, madam. And if troubles were put up to market, I’d sooner buy old than new. It’s something to have seen the worst.’

‘A woman never has seen the worst till she is old, Denner,’ said Mrs Transome, bitterly.

The keen little waiting-woman was not clear as to the cause of her mistress’s added bitterness; but she rarely brought herself to ask questions, when Mrs Transome did not authorise them by beginning to give her information. Banks the bailiff and the head-servant had nodded and winked a good deal over the certainty that Mr Harold was ‘none so fond’ of Jermyn, but this was a subject on which Mrs Transome had never made up her mind to speak, and Denner knew nothing definite. Again, she felt quite sure that there was some important secret connected with Esther’s presence in the house; she suspected that the close Dominic knew the secret, and was more trusted than she was, in spite of her forty years’ service; but any resentment on this ground would have been an entertained reproach against her mistress, inconsistent with Denner’s creed and character. She inclined to the belief that Esther was the immediate cause of the new discontent.

‘If there’s anything worse coming to you, I should like to know what it is, madam,’ she said, after a moment’s silence, speaking always in the same low quick way, and keeping up her quiet labours. ‘When I awake at cock-crow, I’d sooner have one real grief on my mind than twenty false. It’s better to know you’re robbed than to think one’s going to be murdered.’

‘I believe you are the creature in the world that loves me best, Denner; yet you will never understand what I suffered. It’s of no use telling you. There’s no folly in you and no heartache. You are made of iron. You have never had any trouble.’

‘I’ve had some of your trouble, madam.’

‘Yes, you good thing. But as a sick-nurse, that never caught the fever. You never even had a child.’

‘I can feel for things I never went through. I used to be sorry for the poor French queen when I was young: I’d have lain cold for her to lie warm. I know people have feelings according to their birth and station. And you always took things to heart, madam, beyond anybody else. But I hope there’s nothing new, to make you talk of the worst.’

‘Yes, Denner, there is — there i............