THE RETURN
to me at one time; then we tore it, and he went off to Canada and married there. I heard he'd been unhappy, and that there was the rumour of a split. Of course he didn't write or anything; we had ab-so-lutely torn it; but I couldn't help hearing things, and she seems to have been a really bad sort of woman—there were children, too. He's bringing the children back with him to Sevenoaks.
"He wants to come and see me. He's been thinking about me a great deal, he says, and wondering if I've changed, and wishing—He always was a straight sort of man; it was only circumstances drove him crooked. I daresay I was a good bit to blame. I've kept his photograph, though I know I didn't ought, but I liked having it by me to look at."
She had unlocked a drawer and held a stiff-backed photograph up beneath the light, scrutinising it. Lydia listened to a distant surge of movement in the house beneath her; steps across the oil-cloth, windows shutting, voices cut off by the swinging of a door. She felt, revoltedly, as though Mrs. Tottenham were stepping out of her clothes.
"He says he's hardly changed at all.
45
