He had been ready. He had been, for the first time and at considerable personal cost, actually ready, and the readiness had been useless because when the moment came he had defaulted to the only competence he reliably possessed, and thecompetence was not what was wanted, and he had been down this hallway before and kept arriving at the same door.
After some time he got up, and went upstairs, and went to Lydia’s door.
Not the adjoining door. He had not tried that door since the night he had stood in front of it and chosen not to attempt to open it; he was certainly not going to try it tonight. The public door, from the hallway, was what he went to, with some idea of speaking to the maid, asking whether there was anything to be done, whether she had managed to eat, whether there was some practical thing he had not yet thought of.
He raised his hand to knock.
The door opened.
Georgiana looked at him. She did not appear to have expected him, but she did not appear surprised either. She had the expression of a woman who has spent an evening comforting someone she loves and is not prepared to relinquish custody, even temporarily.
He said: “I wanted to ask how she is. Whether there was anything further she needed.”
Georgiana looked at him for a long moment. It was the same look she had given him in the entrance hall, comprehensive and very still, but this one went further; this one was the look of someone arriving at a conclusion they had perhaps hoped to avoid. The slight shake of her head, when it came, was almost imperceptible.
She stepped back and drew the door to behind her, softly, and stood in the corridor.
“She is asleep,” she said. “She cried for a long time and then she went to sleep. That is what she needed.” A pause. “I will check on her in the night.”
“Thank you,” he said.
Georgiana looked at him for a moment longer. Then she went to her own room, and her door closed, and he was alone in the corridor.
The house was very quiet. Through the door beside him, no sound at all.
He stood there for a while, in the dark of the hallway, with all of his competence and the complete knowledge of what it was worth, and then he went to bed.
