It was there, hidden from his daughters’ scrutiny, that he pondered these things.

* * * * *

They waited till the door had closed on him before they spoke.

“Well, after all, that’ll be very jolly for her,” said Mary.

“It isn’t half as jolly as it looks,” said Ally.  “It means that she’ll have to live at Tunbridge Wells.”

“Oh,” said Mary, “it won’t be all Tunbridge Wells.”  She couldn’t bear to think that it would be all Tunbridge Wells.  Not that she did think it for a moment.  It couldn’t be all Tunbridge Wells for a girl like Gwenda.  Mummy could never have contemplated that.  Gwenda couldn’t have contemplated it.  And Mary refused to contemplate it either.  She persuaded herself that what had happened to her sister was simply a piece of the most amazing luck.  She even judged it probable that Gwenda had known very well what she was doing when she went away.

Besides she had always wanted to do something.  She had learned shorthand and typewriting at Westbourne, as if, long ago, she had decided that, if home became insupportable, she would leave it.  And there had always been that agreement between her and Mummy.

When Mary put these things together, she saw that nothing could be more certain than that, sooner or later, Ally or no Ally, Gwenda would have gone away.

But this was after it had occurred to her that Rowcliffe ought to know what had happened and that she had got to tell him.  And that was on the day after Gwenda’s letter came, when Mrs. Gale, having brought in the tea-things, paused in her going to say, “‘Ave yo’ seen Dr. Rawcliffe, Miss Mary?  Ey—­but ‘e’s lookin’ baad.”

“Everybody,” said Mary, “is looking bad this muggy weather.  That reminds me, how’s the baby?”

“’E’s woorse again, Miss.  I tall Assy she’ll navver rear ’im.”

“Has the doctor seen him to-day?”

“Naw, naw, nat yat.  But ’e’ll look in, ’e saays, afore ’e goas.”

Mary looked at the clock.  Rowcliffe left the surgery at four-thirty.  It was now five minutes past.

She wondered:  Did he know, then, or did he not know?  Would Gwenda have written to him?  Was it because she had not written that he was looking bad, or was it because she had written and he knew?

She thought and thought it over; and under all her thinking there lurked the desire to know whether Rowcliffe knew and how he was taking it, and under her desire the longing, imperious and irresistible, to see him.

She would have to ask him to the house.  She had not forgotten that she had to ask him, that she was pledged to ask him on Ally’s account if, as Gwenda had put it, she was to play the game.

But she had had more than one motive for her delay.  It would look better if she were not in too great a hurry. (She said to herself it would look better on Ally’s account.) The longer he was kept away (she said to herself, that he was kept away from Ally) the more he would be likely to want to come.  Sufficient time must elapse to allow of his forgetting Gwenda.  It was not well that he should be thinking all the time of Gwenda when he came. (She said to herself it was not well on Ally’s account.)