“She has often talked to me of these people—­the Hurds,” said Lady Winterbourne, slowly.  “She has always made special friends with them.  Don’t you remember she told us about them that day she first came back to lunch?”

“Of course I remember!  That day she lectured Maxwell, at first sight, on his duties.  She began well.  As for these people,” said Miss Raeburn, more slowly, “one is, of course, sorry for the wife and children, though I am a good deal sorrier for Mrs. Westall, and poor, poor Mrs. Dynes.  The whole affair has so upset Maxwell and me, we have hardly been able to eat or sleep since.  I thought it made Maxwell look dreadfully old this morning, and with all that he has got before him too!  I shall insist on sending for Clarke to-morrow morning if he does not have a better night.  And now this postponement will be one more trouble—­all the engagements to alter, and the invitations. Really! that girl.”

And Miss Raeburn broke off short, feeling simply that the words which were allowed to a well-bred person were wholly inadequate to her state of mind.

“But if she feels it—­as you or I might feel such a thing about some one we knew or cared for, Agneta?”

“How can she feel it like that?” cried Miss Raeburn, exasperated.  “How can she know any one of—­of that class well enough?  It is not seemly, I tell you, Adelaide, and I don’t believe it is sincere.  It’s just done to make herself conspicuous, and show her power over Aldous.  For other reasons too, if the truth were known!”

Miss Raeburn turned over the shirt she was making for some charitable society and drew out some tacking threads with a loud noise which relieved her.  Lady Winterbourne’s old and delicate cheek had flushed.

“I’m sure it’s sincere,” she said with emphasis.  “Do you mean to say, Agneta, that one can’t sympathise, in such an awful thing, with people of another class, as one would with one’s own flesh and blood?”

Miss Raeburn winced.  She felt for a moment the pressure of a democratic world—­a hated, formidable world—­through her friend’s question.  Then she stood to her guns.

“I dare say you’ll think it sounds bad,” she said stoutly; “but in my young days it would have been thought a piece of posing—­of sentimentalism—­something indecorous and unfitting—­if a girl had put herself in such a position.  Marcella ought to be absorbed in her marriage; that is the natural thing.  How Mrs. Boyce can allow her to mix herself with such things as this murder—­to live in that cottage, as I hear she has been doing, passes my comprehension.”

“You mean,” said Lady Winterbourne, dreamily, “that if one had been very fond of one’s maid, and she died, one wouldn’t put on mourning for her.  Marcella would.”

“I dare say,” said Miss Raeburn, snappishly.  “She is capable of anything far-fetched and theatrical.”