Ryven was talking to her son in the room which he had used as an office for the last four years. It was very plainly furnished, and the best chair—she had taken the best chair—was only moderately comfortable. The windows looked on a dingy street, and a perpetual hum and rattle came from the thoroughfare beyond. It was a great deal hotter than it had been at Holt, and there was no freshness in the air. “What will you do, Eustace?” Helena Ryven had come up to town to put the question, but she had been sitting in her uncomfortable chair for half an hour before she asked it. Eustace was obviously very busy. He sat at a littered writing-table, and every now and then the telephone-bell rang and a brief and sometimes unintelligible conversation ensued: “No—tell him quite impossible.… No, certainly not.… No, it would be quite useless.” Twice Katherine Hill had come in from the outer room to refer to him for the wording of some letter of extra importance. As Helena greeted her, the thought passed through her mind that Eustace would miss such a capable secretary; only to be followed by the piercing second thought, “He won’t need a secretary now—his work’s gone.”
