Behind his personal interests his ancestors had drilled into him the
impossibility of imagining that he did not stand for the welfare of his
country. Mrs. Pendyce, who had so often seen her husband look like that,
leaned out of the window above the noisy street.
The General rose.
"Well," he said, "if I can't do anything for you, Margery, I'll take
myself off; you're busy with your dressmakers. Give my love to Horace,
and tell him not to send me another telegram like that."
And bending stiffly, he pressed her hand with a touch of real courtesy
and kindness, took up his hat, and went away. Mrs. Pendyce, watching him
descend the stairs, watching his stiff sloping shoulders, his head with
its grey hair brushed carefully away from the centre parting, the backs
of his feeble, active knees, put her hand to her breast and sighed, for
with him she seemed to see descending all her past life, and that one
cannot see unmoved.
CHAPTER III
MRS. BELLEW SQUARES HER ACCOUNTS
Mrs. Bellew sat on her bed smoothing out the halves of a letter; by her
side was her jewel-case. Taking from it an amethyst necklet, an emerald
pendant, and a diamond ring, she wrapped them in cottonwool, and put
them in an envelope. The other jewels she dropped one by one into her
lap, and sat looking at them.
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