The first cab drove away as soon as its door was
closed and the cabman mounted to his seat. Louisa looking wholly
unprofessional without her nurse's cap and apron and wearing a
tailor-made navy blue costume and a hat with a wing in it, entered
the second cab followed by Edward intensely suggesting private
life and possible connection with a Bank. The second cab followed
the first and Feather having lost her breath looked after them as
they turned the corner of the street.
When they were quite out of sight she turned back into the room.
The colour had left her skin, and her eyes were so wide stretched
and her face so drawn and pinched with abject terror that her
prettiness itself had left her.
"They've gone--all of them!" she gasped. She stopped a moment, her
chest rising and falling. Then she added even more breathlessly,
"There's no one left in the house. It's--empty!"
This was what was going on behind the cream-coloured front, the
white windows and green flower-boxes of the slice of a house as
motors and carriages passed it that evening on their way to dinner
parties and theatres, and later as the policeman walked up and down
slowly upon his beat.
Inside a dim light in the small hall showed a remote corner where
on a peg above a decorative seat hung a man's hat of the highest
gloss and latest form; and on the next peg a smart evening overcoat.
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