It might have been one thing, or it might have been another. It might have been the quality of the voice or the quiver in it, or just the drawn fatigue of the face out of which two candid eyes looked into hers, but the temperature underwent a marked improvement. Nannie knew a lady when she saw and heard one, green slime or no green slime, and she knew when what was wanted was a hot bath, and a hot drink, and a nice warm bed.

It was while she was laying down the law on these lines that Jim Severn was understood to say that he must go and put away the car.

Nannie threw open the bathroom door.

“Constant hot water is what we have, and it’s not everyone can say that. Now, miss, here’s your towel, and I’ll just go and get you one of Miss Barbara’s nightgowns, and the dressing-gown she keeps here, and some slippers. Eh, dear, but you’ve laddered your stockings-past doing anything to by the look of them! And a tear in your coat-but that will mend. Fur tears easy, and it mends easy too.”

She bustled away, and came back again with an amusing flowered dressing-gown, scarlet slippers, and an extremely decorative nightdress.

“Now, my dear, you just have a nice hot bath. And you needn’t spare the water-it does two easy. But you’d better not be too long, for Mr. Jim will be wanting his. There’s some of Miss Barbara’s bath-salts in that jar.”

It was a heavenly bath, and when it was over there was a heavenly hot drink and a soft, delicious bed. By the time Nannie had tucked her in, opened the window, and put out the light she might have been ordering her about since she was three years old. She didn’t go to sleep. She plunged into it. Dreamless depths closed over her.

CHAPTER 4

The ice never formed again. Nannie brought her a cup of tea at eight, and told her all about Barbara whilst she was drinking it. It appeared that she had ceased to be Miss Barbara to anyone except Nannie for the last ten years or so. She was Lady Carradyne.