“Can I see you for two minutes?”

“Yes.”

They whispered rapidly.

At the head of the stairs Mary waited.  He turned.  His smile acknowledged and paid deference to her sweetness and goodness, for Rowcliffe was sufficiently accomplished.

But not more so than Mary Cartaret.  Her face, wide and candid, quivered with subdued interrogation.  Her lips parted as if they said, “I am only waiting to know what I am to do.  I will do what you like, only tell me.”

Rowcliffe stood by the bedroom door, which he had opened for her to pass through again.  His eyes, summoning their powerful pathos, implored forgiveness.

Mary, utterly submissive, passed through.

* * * * *

He followed Gwendolen Cartaret downstairs to the dining-room.

He knew what he was going to say, but what he did say was unexpected.

For, as she stood there in the small and old and shabby room, what struck him was her youth.

“Is your father in?” he said.

He surprised her as he had surprised himself.

“No,” she said.  “Why?  Do you want to see him?”

He hesitated.  “I almost think I’d better.”

“He won’t be a bit of good, you know.  He never is.  He doesn’t even know we sent for you.”

“Well, then—­”

“You’d better tell me straight out.  You’ll have to, in the end.  Is it serious?”

“No.  But it will be if we don’t stop it.  How long has it been going on?”

“Ever since we came to this place.”

“Six months, you said.  And she’s been worse than this last month?”

“Much worse.”

“If it was only the anaemia—­”

“Isn’t it?”

“Yes—­among other things.”

“Not—­her heart?”

“No—­her heart’s all right.”  He corrected himself.  “I mean there’s no disease in it.  You see, she ought to have got well up here in this air.  It’s the sort of place you send anaemic people to to cure them.”

“The dreadful thing is that she doesn’t like the place.”

“Ah—­that’s what I want to get at.  She isn’t happy in it?”

“No.  She isn’t happy.”

He meditated.  “Your sister didn’t tell me that.’

“She couldn’t.”

“I mean your other sister—­Miss Cartaret.”

“She wouldn’t.  She’d think it rather awful.”

He laughed.  “Heaps of people think it awful to tell the truth.  Do you happen to know why she doesn’t like the place?”

She was silent.  Evidently there was some “awfulness” she shrank from.

“Too lonely for her, I suppose?”

“Much too lonely.”

“Where were you before you came here?”

She told him.

“Why did you leave it?”

She hesitated again.  “We couldn’t help it.”

“Well—­it seems a pity.  But I suppose clergymen can’t choose where they’ll live.”