Frances took up her painting again,
and, the weather being propitious, spent hours out of doors, sketching
flowers, trees and nooks of woodland, garden, even the house itself
where bits of it peered suggestively across the orchards. Mrs. Franklyn
seemed always busy about something or other, and never interfered with
us except to propose motoring, tea in another part of the lawn, and so
forth. She flitted everywhere, preoccupied, yet apparently doing
nothing. The house engulfed her rather. No visitor called. For one
thing, she was not supposed to be back from abroad yet; and for another,
I think, the neighborhood--her husband's neighborhood--was puzzled by
her sudden cessation from good works. Brigades and temperance societies
did not ask to hold their meetings in the big hall, and the vicar
arranged the school-treats in another's field without explanation. The
full-length portrait in the dining room, and the presence of the
housekeeper with the "burnt" back hair, indeed, were the only reminders
of the man who once had lived here. Mrs. Marsh retained her place in
silence, well-paid sinecure as it doubtless was, yet with no hint of
that suppressed disapproval one might have expected from her.
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