Lisle Jerningham leaned back in her corner and shut her eyes. Why had she ever gone down to Mountsford? The Cranes were not really her friends at all. She hardly knew them. They were Dale’s friends. And in the end Dale had cried off and made her go alone. Business in Birmingham – Lydia ’s money. There wasn’t very much of it now – she knew that. Lydia ’s money… She tried to stop thinking about Lydia. Mr. Crane was nice – she liked him – big, and jolly and kind. Mrs. Crane always made you feel as if you had a smut on your nose. She liked Dale – woman generally did – but she had a grudge against him for marrying. She liked men to be single and faithfully adoring. She liked a court. She was devoted to her husband, but she liked other men to be devoted to her. And Dale had broken away and married Lisle, so she didn’t like Lisle.

Dale oughtn’t to have made her go down to Mountsford alone. She ought to have refused to go – then none of this would have happened. She would never have stood with the sun on her back, and smelled the yew hedge, and heard the voices say, “A lucky accident for Dale.”

She jerked her thought away. This time yesterday she was seeing Dale off. And then shopping and lunch with Hilda. And then in the late afternoon the hot train journey down to Mountsford. She had left it as late as she could. She had even left it a little too late, because she had had to hurry over her dressing. She saw herself in her silver dress, with the emerald which had been her mother’s. Some people’s eyes would have taken a green shade from the green stone, but hers were never anything else but grey. They didn’t change. There was something in herself which didn’t change either. Even if it was all true, she couldn’t change. Even if Dale wanted her dead, she couldn’t change.