I was shocked. “She’s dead?” It was all I could manage to say.

“She died when she was only six years old. Of a mastoid tumor. Roger won’t speak her name. It’s as if she never existed. He was closer to her in age than Margaret and Alan. Alan, when he came of age, turned Vixen Hill over to Roger. He felt he couldn’t live there, and he bought a house in Portsmouth before joining the Navy as a career officer. Margaret married young. I think to escape. Although it turned out well enough. She and Henry have been very happy.”

“Did you-were you told these things before you married Roger Ellis?” I asked.

“I told myself I’d make Roger forget Juliana. But you can’t really change people, can you? We took a house in London for the first six months, and then I could tell that he missed Vixen Hill. Alan could walk away, you see, but Roger couldn’t. And so we returned to Sussex.” Putting a hand to her head, she said, “I wish this pounding would stop.”

I didn’t remind her about her promise.

We pulled into a station at that juncture, and in the flurry of people getting down or settling into seats, conversation was impossible. Lydia closed her eyes, and I thought she slept for a quarter of an hour or so.

We reached the station just outside of Hartfield in the early afternoon. I was glad, for the train was stuffy and so crowded we could hardly hear ourselves think. I said, as Lydia and I stepped down into a small station hardly worthy of the name, “How far is it to Vixen Hill?”

“Not far, as the crow flies,” she said, handing in our tickets. “There’s a carriage we can hire to take us there. I was so fortunate the day I left-a neighbor was on her way to Hartfield to do her marketing, and she was willing to take me to the station. I wouldn’t have wanted to walk-I’d have missed my train for one thing. But I would have walked, you know. I was that desperate to get away.”