"
"And Mrs. Pogson?"
Lessingham looked at me absently.
"Oh! Mrs. Pogson? She's never interested me. She's too invertebrate;
but I believe she took care of Pogson all right."
Next day I called at the house in Church Street. After some parley I
was admitted into the studio-library. Neither in Mrs. Pogson nor in the
familiar room did I find any alteration, save that the green had
disappeared from her dress. She wore hanging, trailing, unrelieved
black. And that a piece of red woollen cord was tied across, from arm
to arm, of Pogson's large library chair, forbidding occupation of it.
This pleased me. It struck the positive, the, in a way, aggressive
note, which Mrs. Pogson had once before so strangely, unexpectedly,
sounded in my presence.
I said the things common to such occasions as that of our present
meeting; said them with more than merely conventional feeling and
emphasis. I praised her husband's great gifts, his amazing learning,
his eloquence, the magnetic charm by which he captivated and held us.
Finally I dared the question I had come here to ask, which had burned
upon my tongue, indeed, from the moment I heard of Pogson's death.
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