Your cab is still at the door, I think? May I have your address?"
He was very civil and sympathetic, this young medico, but he was also
rather too obviously impressed by his own importance and this gruesome
occasion. Brigit gave him the address of her flat, and helping her
mother into a four-wheeler, as more suitable than a hansom, the two
women drove away towards Kensington.
"I hadn't been in his room for years," sobbed Lady Kingsmead, forgetting
her complexion. "Did you see the pastel of me on the wall between the
windows? And I gave him the clock, too, for his thirty-fifth birthday.
Oh, Brigit! He loved me insanely, poor Gerald, perfectly madly, and so
did I." She broke off, to her daughter's relief, and sobbed again.
Brigit's flat was warm and smelt unaired. Two or three letters lay on
the mat inside the door, a huge blue-bottle boomed at a window trying to
get out.
Lady Kingsmead lay down on Maidie Compton's Chesterfield and wept
loudly. "Oh, Gerald, Gerald, how we loved each other," she wailed. "He
would have died for me. He very nearly killed himself----"
Suddenly the foolish woman sat up and pointed an accusing finger at her
daughter. "And it is all your fault," she cried bitterly; "he said so in
that letter--my poor love.
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