Satterthwaite was extremely indifferent to her surroundings, but she insisted on having a piece of furniture for her papers. She liked also to have a profusion of hot-house, not garden, flowers, but as there were none of these at Lobscheid she did without them. She insisted also, as a rule, on a comfortable chaise longue which she rarely, if ever, used; but the German Empire of those days did not contain a comfortable chair, so she did without it, lying down on her bed when she was really tired. The walls of the large room were completely covered with pictures of animals in death agonies: capercailzies giving up the ghost with gouts of scarlet blood on the snow; deer dying with their heads back and eyes glazing, gouts of red blood on their necks; foxes dying with scarlet blood on green grass. These pictures were frame to frame, representing sport, the hotel having been a former Grand Ducal hunting-box, freshened to suit the taste of the day with varnished pitch-pine, bathrooms, verandahs, and excessively modern but noisy lavatory arrangements which had been put in for the delight of possible English guests.

Mrs. Satterthwaite sat on the edge of her chair; she had always the air of being just about to go out somewhere or of having just come in and being on the point of going to take her things off. She said:

‘There’s been a telegram waiting for her all the afternoon. I knew she was coming.’

Father Consett said:

‘I saw it in the rack myself. I misdoubted it.’ He added: ‘Oh dear, oh dear! After all we’ve talked about it; now it’s come.’

Mrs. Satterthwaite said:

‘I’ve been a wicked woman myself as these things are measured; but …’

Father Consett said:

‘Ye have! It’s no doubt from you she gets it, for your husband was a good man. But one wicked woman is enough for my contemplation at a time. I’m no St. Anthony.… The young man says he will take her back?’

‘On conditions,’ Mrs. Satterthwaite said. ‘He is coming here to have an interview.’

The priest said:

‘Heaven knows, Mrs. Satterthwaite, there are times when to a poor priest the rule of the Church as regards marriage seems bitter hard and he almost doubts her inscrutable wisdom. He doesn’t mind you. But at times I wish that that young man would take what advantage – it’s all there is! – that he can of being a Protestant and divorce Sylvia. For I tell you, there are bitter things to see amongst my flock over there.…’ He made a vague gesture towards the infinite. ‘And bitter things I’ve seen, for the heart of man is a wicked place. But never a bitterer than this young man’s lot.’

‘As you say,’ Mrs. Satterthwaite said, ‘my husband was a good man. I hated him, but that was as much my fault as his. More! And the only reason I don’t wish Christopher to divorce Sylvia is that it would bring disgrace on my husband’s name. At the same time, Father …’

The priest said:

‘I’ve heard near enough.’

‘There’s this to be said for Sylvia,’ Mrs. Satterthwaite went on. ‘There are times when a woman hates a man – as Sylvia hates her husband.… I tell you I’ve walked behind a man’s back and nearly screamed because of the desire to put my nails into the veins of his neck. It was a fascination. And it’s worse with Sylvia. It’s a natural antipathy.’

‘Woman!’ Father Consett fulminated, ‘I’ve no patience wid ye! If the woman, as the Church directs, would have children by her husband and live decent, she would have no such feelings.