He was shown into the drawing-room, and it, too, was much as he
had left it nine years ago.
Kitty Palliser was there; she rose to meet him with her irrepressible
friendliness, undiminished by nine years. There was nothing cold and
business-like about Kitty.
"Will you tell Miss Harden?" said she to the detached, retreating
Robert. Then she held out her hand. "I am very glad to see you." But a
wave of compassion rather than of gladness swept over her face as she
looked at him. She made him sit down, and gave him tea. There was a
marked gentleness in all her movements, unlike the hilarious lady she
used to be.
The minutes went by and Lucia did not appear. He could not attend to
what Kitty was saying. His eyes were fixed on the door that looked as
if it were never going to open. Kitty seemed to bear tenderly with his
abstraction. Once he glanced round the room, recognizing familiar
objects. He had expected, after Dicky's descent on Court House, to
find nothing recognizable in it. Kitty was telling him how an uncle of
hers had lent them the house for a year, how he had bought it
furnished, and how, but for the dismantled library and portrait
gallery, it was pretty much as it had been in Miss Harden's time. So
unchanged was it and its atmosphere that Rickman felt himself in the
presence of a destiny no less unchanging and familiar. He had come on
business as he had done nine years ago; and he felt that the events of
that time must in some way repeat themselves, that when he was alone
with Lucia he would say to her such things as he had said before, that
there would be differences, misunderstandings, as before, and that his
second coming would end in misery and separation like the first.
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