Hilda said, smiling:
‘Do you think we women are more unworldly?’
Lydia said with a shrug of her graceful shoulders:
‘Well, you know, it isn’t really our money—not our own! That may make a difference.’
Hilda said thoughtfully:
‘She is a strange child—Pilar, I mean. I wonder what will become of her?’
Lydia sighed.
‘I’m glad that she will be independent. To live here, to be given a home and a dress allowance, would not, I think, be very satisfactory to her. She’s too proud and, I think, too—too alien.’
She added musingly:
‘I once brought some beautiful blue lapis home from Egypt. Out there, against the sun and the sand, it was a glorious colour—a brilliant warm blue. But when I got it home, the blue of it hardly showed any more. It was just a dull, darkish string of beads.’
Hilda said:
‘Yes, I see…’
Lydia said gently:
‘I am so glad to come to know you and David at last. I’m glad you both came here.’
Hilda sighed:
‘How often I’ve wished in the last few days that we hadn’t!’
‘I know. You must have done…But you know, Hilda, the shock hasn’t affected David nearly as badly as it might have done. I mean, he is so sensitive that it might have upset him completely. Actually, since the murder, he’s seemed ever so much better—’
Hilda looked slightly disturbed. She said:
‘So you’ve noticed that? It’s rather dreadful in a way…But oh! Lydia, it’s undoubtedly so!’
She was silent a minute recollecting words that her husband had spoken only the night before. He had said to her, eagerly, his fair hair tossed back from his forehead:
‘Hilda, you remember in Tosca—when Scarpia is dead and Tosca lights the candles at his head and feet? Do you remember what she says: ‘Now I can forgive him…’ That is what I feel—about Father. I see now that all these years I couldn’t forgive him, and yet I really wanted to…But no—now there’s no rancour any more. It’s all wiped away. And I feel—oh, I feel as though a great load had been lifted from my back.’
She had said, striving to fight back a sudden fear:
‘Because he’s dead?’
He had answered quickly, stammering in his eagerness:
‘No, no, you don’t understand. Not because he is dead, but because my childish stupid hate of him is dead…’
Hilda thought of those words now.
She would have liked to repeat them to the woman at her side, but she felt instinctively that it was wiser not.
She followed Lydia out of the drawing-room into the hall.
Magdalene was there, standing by the hall table with a little parcel in her hand. She jumped when she saw them. She said:
‘Oh, this must be M Poirot’s important purchase. I saw him put it down here just now. I wonder what it is.’