Astonished and slightly resentful at the sharpness of her guest’s unprovoked onslaught, Damaris had dropped the little bunch of trinkets and backed into her corner of the sofa.

“Colonel Carteret has gone,” she said coldly, rather irrelevantly, the statement drawn from her by a vague instinct of self-defence.

“Gone!” Henrietta echoed, with equal irrelevance.  For she was singularly discomposed.

“Yes, he started for England last night.  But you must know that already, Henrietta.  He wrote to you—­he told me so himself.”

But having once committed herself by use of a word implying ignorance, Mrs. Frayling could hardly do otherwise than continue the deception.  Explanation would be too awkward a business.  The chances of detection, moreover, were infinitesimal.  There were things she meant to say which would sound far more unstudied and obvious could she keep up the fiction of ignorance.  This, quickly realizing, she again and more flagrantly fibbed.  The voluntary lie acts as a tonic giving you—­for the moment at least—­most comforting conceit of your own courage and perspicacity.  And Henrietta just now stood in need of a tonic.  She had been strangely overcome by the force of her own emotion—­an accident which rarely happened to her and which she very cordially detested when it did.

“Someone must have omitted to post the letter, then,” she said, with a suitable air of annoyance.  “How exceedingly careless—­unless it has not been sent over from the hotel to the Pavilion.  I have been obliged, more than once, to complain of the hall porter’s very casual delivery of my letters.  I will make enquiries directly, if I don’t find it on my return.  But this is all by the way.  Tell me, dearest child, what is the reason of Colonel Carteret’s leaving so suddenly?  Is it not surprisingly unexpected?”

“He was wanted at home on business of some sort,” Damaris replied, as she felt a little lamely.  She was displeased, worried by Henrietta.  It was difficult to choose her words.  “He has been away for a long time, you see.  I think he has been beautifully unselfish in giving up so much of his time to us.”

“Do you?” Henrietta enquired with meaning.  “If I remember right we discussed that point once before.  I can repeat now what I then told you, with even firmer assurance, namely, that he struck me as remarkably well pleased with himself and his surroundings and generally content.”

“Of course he loves being with my father,” Damaris hastened to put in, having no wish to enlarge on the topic suggested by the above speech.

“Of course.  Who doesn’t, or rather who wouldn’t were they sufficiently fortunate to have the chance.  But come—­to be honest—­je me demande, is it exclusively Sir Charles whom Carteret loves to be with?”

And as she spoke, Henrietta bent forward from the waist, her dainty lavender skirts spread out on the faded blue of the sofa mattress, the contours of her dainty lavender bodice in fine relief against the faded blue cushions, her whole person, in the subdued light, bright and apparently fragile as some delicate toy of spun glass.  She put out her hand, and lightly, mischievously, touched the string of pearls encircling the girl’s throat.