That night she took pen and paper up to her bedroom and sat down to write a little note.  Sat down to write it and got up again; wrote it and tore it up, and sat down to write another.  This she left open for such emendations and improvements as should occur to her in the night.  Perhaps none did occur; perhaps she realized that a literary work loses its force and spontaneity in conscious elaboration; anyhow the note was put up just as it was and posted first thing in the morning at the pillar-box on her way to St. Sidwell’s.

Old Martha was cleaning the steps as Miss Quincey went out; but Miss Quincey carefully avoided looking Martha’s way.  Like the ostrich she supposed that if she did not see Martha, Martha could not see her.  But Martha had seen her.  She saw everything.  She had seen the note open on Miss Juliana’s table by the window in the bedroom when she was drawing up the blind; she had seen the silk blouse lying in its tissue paper when she was tidying Miss Juliana’s drawer; and that very afternoon she discovered a certain cake deposited by Miss Juliana in the dining-room cupboard with every circumstance of secrecy and disguise.

And Martha shook her old head and put that and that together, the blouse, the cake and the letter; though what connection there could possibly be between the three was more than Miss Juliana could have told her.  Even to Martha the association was so singular that it pointed to some painful aberration of intellect on Miss Juliana’s part.

As in duty bound, Martha brought up her latest discovery and laid it before Mrs. Moon.  Beyond that she said nothing, indeed there was nothing to be said.  The cake (it was of the expensive pound variety, crowned with a sugar turret and surrounded with almond fortifications) spoke for itself, though in an unknown language.

“What does that mean, Martha?”

“Miss Juliana, m’m, I suppose.”

Martha pursed up her lips, suppressing the impertinence of her own private opinion and awaiting her mistress’s with respect.

No doubt she would have heard it but that Miss Juliana happened to come in at that moment, and Mrs. Moon’s attention was distracted by the really amazing spectacle presented by her niece.  And Miss Juliana, who for five-and-twenty years had never appeared in anything but frowsy drab or dingy grey, Miss Juliana flaunting in silk at four o’clock in the afternoon, Miss Juliana, all shining and shimmering like a silver and mauve chameleon, was a sight to take anybody’s breath away.  Martha dearly loved a scene, for to be admitted to a scene was to be admitted to her mistress’s confidence; but the excellent woman knew her place, and before that flagrant apparition she withdrew as she would have withdrawn from a family scandal.

Miss Quincey advanced timidly, for of course she knew that she had to cross that room under fire of criticism; but on the whole she was less abject than she might have been, for at the moment she was thinking of Dr. Cautley.  He had actually accepted her kind invitation, and that fact explained and justified her; besides, she carried her Browning in her hand, and it made her feel decidedly more natural.