He meant that Jane was to go away, because it was even more painful for her than for the others.  But Jane didn’t go.  It wasn’t painful for Jane really.  She felt hard and cold, and as if nothing mattered.  She was angry with Clare for crying instead of explaining what had happened.

Lady Pinkerton said, passing her hand over her forehead in the tired way she had and shutting her eyes, ’My dear, you are over-wrought.  You don’t know what you are saying.  You will be able to tell us more clearly in the morning.’

But Clare said they must believe her now, and Lord Pinkerton must telephone up to the Haste and have the stuff about the Hobart Mystery stopped.

‘My poor child,’ said Lady Pinkerton, ’what has made you suddenly, so long after, tell us this terrible story?’

Clare sobbed that she hadn’t been able to bear it on her mind any more, and also that she hadn’t known till lately that Gideon was suspected.

Lord and Lady Pinkerton looked at each other, wondering what to believe, then at Jane, wishing she was gone, so that they could ask Clare more about it.  Jane said, ‘Don’t mind me.  I don’t mind hearing about it.’  Jane meant to stay.  She thought that if she was gone they would persuade Clare she had dreamed it all and that it had been really Gideon after all.

Jane asked Clare why she had pushed Oliver, thinking that she ought to explain, and not cry.  But still Clare only cried, and at last said she couldn’t ever tell any one.  Lady Pinkerton turned pink, and Lord Pinkerton walked up and down and said, ‘Tut tut,’ and it was more obvious than ever what Clare meant.

She added, ’But I never meant, indeed I never meant, to hurt him.  He just fell back, and ...’

‘Was killed,’ Jane finished for her.  Jane thought Clare was like their mother in trying to avoid plain words for disagreeable things.

Clare cried and cried.  ‘Oh,’ she said, ’I’ve not had a happy moment since,’ which was as nearly true as these excessive statements ever are.

Lady Pinkerton tried to calm her, and said, ’My poor, dear child, you don’t know what you are saying.  You must go to bed now, and tell us in the morning, when you are more yourself.’

Clare didn’t go to bed until Lord Pinkerton had promised to ring up the Haste.  Then she went, with Lady Pinkerton, who was crying too now, because she was beginning to believe the story.

2

Jane didn’t know what she believed.  She didn’t believe what Clare had implied—­that Oliver had tried to kiss her.  Because Oliver hadn’t been like that; it wasn’t the sort of thing he did.  Jane thought it caddish of Clare to have tried to make them think that of him.  But she might, Jane thought, have been angry with him about something else; she might have pushed him....  Or she might not; she might be imagining or inventing the whole thing.  You never knew, with Clare.

If it was true, Jane thought, she had been a fool about Arthur.  But, if he hadn’t done it, why had he been so queer?  Why had he avoided her, and been so odd and ashamed from the first morning on?