The Handsome Road by Gwen Bristow

Denis was happy in having at last won her promise, and Ann was feeling a pleasant sense of security. Everything was going to be so simple now that she had finally decided to marry Denis. She could see her life with him as clearly as if she were looking back instead of forward.
    Maybe, she thought, if she had not been brought up all her life to expect just such a marriage she would find it more exciting. It occurred to Ann that perhaps she had received too much good fortune. That thought retreated, abashed at its own silliness, as soon as it entered her head, but she could not help being aware of it: the road she had traveled had been so very smooth that she had no standard by which to recognize either the peaks or valleys of experience.
    3
    The first week in October, Mrs. Larne had the servants begin their semi-annual cleaning of the Ardeith manor. When the work was well under way she made her inspection of the closets and storerooms to make sure everything was going ahead according to her instructions. The keys clinked authoritatively from her belt as she moved.
    Mrs. Larne loved her house. The fragrant linen-closets, the shining floors, the wine-shelves with their rows of dusty bottles, the china and glass and silver gleaming in their places, all gave her a smooth, quiet sense of work well done. This was her kingdom and she ruled it with honor. Her servants, well-disciplined and fairly dealt with, worked without confusion, each having his own appointed tasks and leisure when those were finished. She had never understood how some women could be so careless as to trust their homes to hired housekeepers. Her own keys never left her hands unless she was too ill to quit her bed, when she reluctantly gave them to Napoleon. She had trained Napoleon carefully from his boyhood, and proud of his position as head house-man he supervised the lesser servants more sternly than she did.
    In the linen-closets the girls were replacing the linens on shelves newly dusted and covered with fresh tissue-paper. Between the sheets they placed packets of vetivert root wrapped in mosquito netting, and the warm fragrance of vetivert drifted into the hall. Mrs. Larne reached toward a pile of tablecloths, and her hands went with pleasure over the heavy damask. Here and there her fingers touched a darn, so delicately woven into the fabric that its presence could hardly be detected. She had herself taught the girls to darn like that. Linens like hers were meant to last for decades, and they did if well cared for; she never bought anything but the best, and she used it till it fell apart.
    On the back gallery the house-boys were spreading out the winter curtains and rugs, brushing them to get off the last fragments of the tobacco leaves with which they had been rolled up all summer to keep out moths. With a glance at them Mrs. Larne went back into the hall, unlocked the wine-closet and went through it to the door at the back. This door opened on a staircase leading down into the vault. Calling one of the girls to bring her a lighted candle Mrs. Larne descended into the vault alone. The air down here was musty. The walls were brick and concrete, four feet thick. On the shelves lay rows of ancient bottles hung with cobwebs, rare acquisitions of liquor that were irreplaceable and brought out only in celebration of some great occasion such as a birth or marriage. To the left stood the safe where were kept a few fine heirlooms too precious to be locked away upstairs.
    Everything in the vault was in place. Mrs. Larne went back up the stairs and through the wine-closet, locking the doors behind her. In the hall she gave her candle to the girl and spoke to Napoleon.
    “Let me know when they’ve done putting away the linens. I’ll be in my study upstairs.”
    “Yes ma’am.” With the wellbred deference characteristic of him, Napoleon bowed from the waist. “You dropped your handkerchief, Mrs. Larne.”
    “Thank you,” she said. Napoleon turned to give the