It was at this point (when, I must say, we had thrashed it out pretty thoroughly) that Mrs. Thesiger came in.  Viola left me to her.

I noticed that, except for the moment of Viola’s formal introduction of me, neither of them spoke to or looked at the other.

I have said that Mrs. Thesiger was a charming woman.  I may have said other things that imply she was not so charming; those things, if I really said them, I take back, now that I have come to my first meeting with her.  When I recall that ten minutes—­it didn’t last longer—­I cannot think of her as otherwise than perfect.  It took perfection, of a sort, to deal creditably with the situation.  Nothing could well have been more painful for Mrs. Thesiger.  I, an utter stranger, was supposed to know all about her daughter, to know more than she or any of them knew.  I held the secret of those dubious seven days in Belgium.  That the days would be dubious I must have known when I set out to bring Viola back from Belgium.  I must, the poor lady probably said to herself, have known Viola.  And my knowledge of her, so dreadful and so intimate, was a thing she was afraid of; she didn’t want to come too near it.  But it was also a thing that must be exceedingly painful to me.  She conceived that I would dread her approach every bit as much as she dreaded mine.

And so—­and so Mrs. Thesiger ignored my knowledge; she ignored the situation.  Beautifully and consistently, from the beginning to the end of my stay in Canterbury, she ignored it.

She had come in now to bring me her invitation, and her husband’s invitation, to stay.  Her husband, she said, expected me.  He was out; he had had to go to a Diocesan Meeting—­but it would be over by now, the tiresome meeting, and he would be here in a few minutes.

I protested.  I had taken rooms at my Fifteenth Century hotel.

She insisted.  They could make that all right.  They knew the hotel-keeper.  He was used to having people taken from him at the last minute.  They would send round for my things.  My room was waiting for me.

I said, Really?—­But they were too kind—­

She said, No.  It was the least they could do.

This, with its faint suggestion of indebtedness, was as near as she got to the situation.

She must have sighted it in the distance, for she slanted away from it with a perilous and graceful sweep.  She had heard so much about me from her daughter.  She had wanted to make my acquaintance.  She was glad of this opportunity—­

(We smiled at each other to show that there was nothing to wince at in her phrase.)

I said I was glad of it too, and what a charming garden they had.

Wasn’t it?  And did I know Canterbury?  I wished I did.  Well—­I would know it now.  And if I didn’t mind ringing the bell the butler would fetch my things over from the “Tabard.”  And so on, charmingly, till the Canon came in and relieved her.