And on large flat feet she moved away towards the back-staircase, leading down to the offices from the far end of the passage, leaving an odour of pastry behind her and of cloves.

“To think of what to-morrow may bring, ah! dear me,” she murmured as she went.

During the ten minutes or so which immediately followed Theresa Bilson boxed the compass in respect of sensations, the needle, as may be noted, invariably quivering back to the same point—­namely, righteous anger against Damaris.  For was not that high-spirited maiden’s imperviousness to influence and defiance of authority—­her, Theresa’s, influence and authority—­the mainspring of all this disastrous complication?  Theresa found it convenient to believe so, and whip herself up to almost frantic determination in that belief.  It was so perfectly clear.  All the more clear because her informant, Mary, evidently did not share her belief.  Mary’s account of to-day’s most vexatious transactions betrayed partizanship and prejudice, such as might be expected from an uneducated person, offering—­as Theresa assured herself—­a pertinent example of the workings of “the servant mind.”  Nevertheless uneasy suspicion dogged her, a haunting though unformulated dread that other persons—­one person above all others—­might endorse Mary’s prejudices rather than her own, so reasonably based, conviction.

“If only Mr. Patch had been in there’d have been somebody to depend on,” the woman told her, recounting the anxious search after vanished Damaris.  “But he’d driven into Marychurch of course, starting ever so early because of the parcels he had your orders to call for at the several shops, before meeting the train.  And the gardeners had left work on account of the wet; so we’d nobody to send to make enquiries anywhere except Tolling, and that feather-head Alfred, who you can’t trust half a minute out of your sight.”  Here she paused in her narrative and made a move, adroitly driving Theresa Bilson before her out on to the landing, thus putting a greater distance between that tormented spinster and the neighbourhood of Damaris’ bed-chamber.  Her handsome brown eyes held the light of battle and her colour was high.  She straightened a chair, standing against the wall at the stair-head, with a neatly professional hand in passing.

“Mrs. Cooper and I were fairly wild waiting down on the sea-wall with the lantern, thinking of drowning and—­worse,—­when”—­she glanced sharply at her companion and, lowering her eyes altered the position of the chair by a couple of inches—­“when Captain Faircloth’s boat came up beside the breakwater and he carried Miss Damaris ashore and across the garden.”

“Stop”—­Theresa broke in—­“I do not follow you.  Faircloth, Captain Faircloth?  You are not, I earnestly hope, speaking of the owner of that low public-house on the island?”

“Yes—­him,” Mary returned grimly, her eyes still lowered.

“And do you mean me to understand that this young man carried Miss Damaris—­actually carried her”—­Miss Bilson choked and cleared her throat with a foolish little crowing sound—­“carried her all the way into the house—­in his arms?”