When she smiled it was as if the spirit of her small brooding face took wings and fluttered, lifting delicately the rather heavy corners of her mouth and eyes.

Then, quietly, and with no indecorous haste, she went down into the drawing-room to receive Rowcliffe.  She was the eldest and it was her duty.

By the mercy of Heaven the Vicar had gone out.

* * * * *

Gwenda left Rowcliffe with Mary and went upstairs to prepare Alice for his visit.  She had brushed out her sister’s long pale hair and platted it, and had arranged the plats, tied with knots of white ribbon, one over each low breast, and she had helped her to put on a little white flannel jacket with a broad lace collar.  Thus arrayed and decorated, Alice sat up in her bed, her small slender body supported by huge pillows, white against white, with no color about her but the dull gold of her hair.

Gwenda was still in the room, tidying it, when Mary brought Rowcliffe there.

It was a Rowcliffe whom she had not yet seen.  She had her back to him as he paused in the doorway to let Mary pass through.  Ally’s bed faced the door, and the look in Ally’s eyes made her aware of the change in him.  All of a sudden he had become taller (much taller than he really was) and rigid and austere.  His youth and its charm dropped clean away from him.  He looked ten years older than he had been ten minutes ago.  Compared with him, as he stood beside her bed, Ally looked more than ever like a small child, a child vibrating with shyness and fear, a child that implacable adult authority has found out in foolishness and naughtiness; so evident was it to Ally that to Rowcliffe nothing was hidden, nothing veiled.

It was as a child that he treated her, a child who can conceal nothing, from whom most things—­all the serious and important things—­must be concealed.  And Ally knew the terrible advantage that he took of her.

It was bad enough when he asked her questions and took no more notice of her answers than if she had been a born fool.  That might have been his north-country manners and probably he couldn’t help them.  But there was no necessity that Ally could see for his brutal abruptness, and the callous and repellent look he had when she bared her breast to the stethescope that sent all her poor secrets flying through the long tubes that attached her heart to his abominable ears.  Neither (when he had disentangled himself from the stethescope) could she understand why he should scowl appallingly as he took hold of her poor wrist to feel her pulse.

She said to herself, “He knows everything about me and he thinks I’m awful.”

It was anguish to Ally that he should think her awful.

And (to make it worse, if anything could make it) there was Mary standing at the foot of the bed and staring at her.  Mary knew perfectly well that he was thinking how awful she was.  It was what Mary thought herself.