bittered him. Everything fed it: the fact of the empty house fed it; the fact that Charlie would be at Ashdown fed it. It is always feeding-time for suspicion, and suspicion is omnivorous, and knows no quenching of its appetite.
Later in the day he was sitting in his room with a report he had to master, but with a mind that persistently wandered from it. Several people had come to lunch, and among them Charlie, who brought not too good an account of Maud. She was still a good deal pulled down by her attack, and though she was up, she was depressed and weak. It would be so nice of Lucia, he said, to go and see her and convince her that he was right in having telegraphed to Mouse to say that he must throw up his visit, and stop with his wife. Maud did not want him to do so; she said it was quite absurd, and wished him to go. Lucia had broken in at this.
"Oh, Charlie, I am sorry," she said, "but I entirely agree with Maud. I know exactly what influenza depression is, and it is really much better to leave a person alone. She doesn't want you. Poor Maud! I will go and see her this afternoon if I can squeeze it in."
Charlie caught Lucia's eye.
"Oh well, then, don't go and see her, if you mean to say that," he said. "I want you to back me up, and not her. I'm not going to Mouse; that is quite settled."
Lucia had seen Madge again that morning, who had condemned her rejection of Charlie as yacht-companion. Lucia had seen the point when it was shown her, and here was a heaven-sent opportunity to repair the error. To urge Charlie to come to Ashdown would be the correction of any inference Edgar might have drawn last night.
"But it's too disappointing," she said. "I was reckoning on your being there. Edgar and I are going off at the end of the week, and you will have gone to St. Moritz before we get back, and we shan't meet for two thousand years. Oh, do come!"
But Charlie had remained firm. He had also left the house immediately after lunch.
It was this that got between Edgar and his book. This morning it had been the fact that Charlie was going to be at Ashdown that had been food for suspicion. Now he was not going to be there, and still suspicion fed and fattened. He did not know what it meant, but soon it would fit into its place, if he thought about it.
