‘How?’ Marion ’s voice was strained.

‘She caught my coat, and I could feel her shaking. She looked most frightfully unhappy and sort of desperate – not gloating like a ghoul. And she said she only wanted to know how you were, because she’d always liked you, and – and things like that.’

It came over Hilary rather late in the day that it would really have been better to stick to Henry as a topic. She had bolted for the second time with a rather similar result. The story of her adventure wasn’t really calculated to bring Marion out of her mood, but she would have to go through with it now, because Marion was asking insistently,

‘Who was she?

‘I don’t know, darling – I told you I didn’t. I really do think she was a bit batty, because she talked in the oddest way. There was a man with her. He went along the corridor just about the time I came to – after seeing Henry, you know. And she said awfully queer things about him, like thanking God he’d gone, because she’d been hoping and praying she’d get a chance of speaking to me. She was most frightfully worked up, you know, twisting her hands about and clutching at her collar as if she couldn’t breathe.’

‘What was he like?’ said Marion slowly. She was leaning her head upon her hand, and the long fingers hid her eyes.

‘Well -rather like Aunt Emmeline’s Mrs. Tidmarsh -you know, the one who comes in and obliges when Eliza has a holiday. Not really, but a sort of family likeness – that all-overish look and awfully respectable – and the way she called me miss all the time. I’ve known Mrs. Tidmarsh do it twice in a sentence, and I’m not at all sure this poor thing didn’t too.’

‘Middle-aged?’

‘Born that way. You know how it is with Mrs. Tidmarsh – you simply couldn’t think of her being a baby, or young. Like her clothes – they never get any older, and you can’t imagine their ever being new.’