‘They had every crime!’ said Cicely impatiently.  ’It isn’t worth discriminating.’

Marsworth raised his eyebrows.

‘Poor boys!’

Cicely flushed.

‘You think, of course, I have no right to criticise anything in khaki!’

‘Not at all.  Criticism is the salt of life.’  His eyes twinkled.

‘That I entirely deny!’ said Cicely, firmly.  She made a fantastic but agreeable figure as she sat near the window in the full golden light of the March evening.  Above her black toque there soared a feather which almost touched the ceiling of the low room—­a panache, nodding defiance; while her short grey skirts shewed her shapely ankles and feet, clothed in grey gaiters and high boots of the very latest perfection.

‘What do you deny, Cicely?’ asked her brother, absently, conscious always, through all the swaying of talk, of the slight childish form of Nelly Sarratt beneath him, in her deep chair; and of the eyes and mouth, which after the few passing smiles he had struck from them, were veiled again in their habitual sadness. ‘Here I and sorrow sit.’  The words ran through his mind, only to be passionately rejected.  She was young!—­and life was long.  Forget she would, and must.

At her brother’s question, Cicely merely shrugged her shoulders.

‘Your sister was critical,’ said Marsworth, laughing,—­’and then denies the uses of criticism.’

‘As some people employ it!’ said Cicely, pointedly.

Marsworth’s mouth twitched—­but he said nothing.

Then Hester, perceiving that the atmosphere was stormy, started some of the usual subjects that relieve tension; the weather—­the possibility of a rush of Easter tourists to the Lakes—­the daffodils that were beginning to make beauty in some sheltered places.  Marsworth assisted her; while Cicely took a chair beside Nelly, and talked exclusively to her, in a low voice.  Presently Hester saw their hands slip together—­Cicely’s long and vigorous fingers enfolding Nelly’s thin ones.  How had two such opposites ever come to make friends?  The kindly old maid was very conscious of cross currents in the spiritual air, as she chatted to Marsworth.  She was keenly aware of Farrell, and could not keep the remembrance of what he had said to her out of her mind.  Nelly’s face and form, also, as the twilight veiled them, were charged for Hester with pitiful meaning.  While at the back of her thoughts there was an expectation, a constant and agitating expectation, of another arrival.  Bridget Cookson might be upon them at any moment.  To Hester Martin she was rapidly becoming a disquieting and sinister element in this group of people.  Yet why, Hester could not really have explained.

The afternoon was rapidly drawing in, and Farrell was just beginning to take out his watch, and talk of starting home, when the usual clatter of wheels and hoofs announced the arrival of the evening coach.  Nelly sat up, looking very white and weary.