Elizabeth lingered over the fire; while Pamela wondered impatiently why she did not go to her office work as she generally did about nine o’clock.  Pamela’s mood was more thorny than ever.  Had she not seen a letter in Elizabeth’s handwriting lying that very afternoon on the hall-table for post—­addressed to Captain Chicksands, D.S.O., War Office, Whitehall?  Common sense told her that it probably contained nothing but an answer to some questions Arthur had put to the Squire’s ‘business secretary’ as to the amount of ash in the Squire’s woods—­Arthur’s Intelligence appointment having something to do with the Air Board.  But the mere fact that Elizabeth should be writing to him stirred intolerable resentment in the girl’s passionate heart.  She knew very well that it was foolish, unreasonable, but could no more help it than a love-smitten maiden of old Sicily.  It was her hour of possession, and she was struggling with it blindly.

And Elizabeth, the shrewd and clever Elizabeth, saw nothing, and knew nothing.  If she had ever for a passing moment suspected the possibility of ‘an affair’ between Arthur Chicksands and Pamela, she had ceased to think of it.  The eager projects with which her own thoughts were teeming, had driven out the ordinary preoccupations of womankind.  Derelict farms, the food-production of the county, timber, village reconstruction, war-work of various kinds, what time was there left?—­what room?—­in a mind wrestling with a hundred new experiences, for the guessing of a girl’s riddle?

Yet all the same she remained her just and kindly self.  She was troubled—­much troubled—­by the twins’ behaviour.  She must somehow get to the bottom of it.

So that when only she and Pamela were left in the hall she went up to the girl, not without agitation.

’Pamela—­won’t you tell me?—­have I done anything to offend you and Desmond?’

She spoke very quietly, but her tone showed her wounded.  Pamela started and looked up.

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said coldly.  ’Did you think we had been rude to you?’

It was the first hostile word they had ever exchanged.

Elizabeth grew pale.

’I didn’t say anything about your being rude.  I asked you if you were cross with me.’

‘Oh—­cross!’ said Pamela, suddenly conscious of a suffocating excitement.  ’What’s the good of being cross?  It’s you who are mistress here.’

Elizabeth fell back a step in dismay.

‘I do think you ought to explain,’ she said after a moment.  ’If I had done anything you didn’t like—­anything you thought unkind, I should be very very sorry.’

Pamela rose from her seat.  Elizabeth’s tone seemed to her pure hypocrisy.  All the bitter, poisonous stuff she had poured out to Desmond the night before was let loose again.  Stammering and panting, she broke into the vaguest and falsest accusations.