Queen Lucia

That would be an interesting thing for them: it would cause one of those little thrills of pleasantexcitement and conjectural exercise which supplied Riseholme with its emotional daily bread. Theywould all wonder what had happened to her, whether she had been taken ill at the very last momentbefore leaving town and with her well-known fortitude and consideration for the feelings of others, had sent her maid on to assure her husband that he need not be anxious. That would clearly be MrsQuantock's suggestion, for Mrs Quantock's mind, devoted as it was now to the study of ChristianScience, and the determination to deny the existence of pain, disease and death as regards herself, was always full of the gloomiest views as regards her friends, and on the slightest excuse, picturedthat they, poor blind things, were suffering from false claims. Indeed, given that the fly had alreadyarrived at The Hurst, and that its arrival had at this moment been seen by or reported to DaisyQuantock, the chances were vastly in favour of that lady's having already started in to give MrsLucas absent treatment. Very likely Georgie Pillson had also seen the anticlimax of the fly's arrival, but he would hazard a much more probable though erroneous solution of her absence. He wouldcertainly guess that she had sent on her maid with her luggage to the station in order to take a seatfor her, while she herself, oblivious of the passage of time, was spending her last half hour incontemplation of the Italian masterpieces at the National Gallery, or the Greek bronzes at theBritish Museum. Certainly she would not be at the Royal Academy, for the culture of Riseholme, ledby herself, rejected as valueless all artistic efforts later than the death of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and agreat deal of what went before. Her husband with his firm grasp of the obvious, on the other hand, would be disappointingly capable even before her maid confirmed his conjecture, of concluding thatshe had merely walked from the stat