“Good!” I commented softly.  “I’m simply ravenous.”

“Are you?” Miss Tattersall said.  “You deserve to go without breakfast for having missed prayers,” and added in precisely the same undertone of conventional commonplace, “I don’t believe she came back at all last night.”

But, having thus piqued my curiosity, she gave me no opportunity to gratify it.  She checked the question that my change of expression must have foreshadowed by a frown which warned me that she could not give any reason for her suspicion in that company.

“Later on,” she whispered, and got up from her seat in the window, leaving me to puzzle over the still uncertain mystery of Brenda’s disappearance.  Miss Bailey had not, apparently, overheard the confidence.  She did not, in any case, relinquish for an instant that air of simple, attentive innocence which so admirably suited the fresh prettiness of her style.

There was little conversation over the breakfast table.  We were all glad to find an excuse for silence either in the pretence or reality of hunger.  Old Jervaise’s excuse was, quite pathetically, only a pretence; but he tried very hard to appear engrossed in the making of a hearty meal.  His manner had begun to fascinate me, and I had constantly to check myself from staring at him.  I found it so difficult to account satisfactorily for the effect of dread that he in some way conveyed.  It was, I thought, much the effect that might have been produced by a criminal in danger of arrest.

But all of us, in our different ways, were more than a little uncomfortable.  The whole air of the breakfast-table was one of dissimulation.  Gordon Hughes made occasional efforts in conversation that were too glaringly irrelevant to the real subject of our thoughts.  And with each beginning of his, the others, particularly Olive, Mrs. Jervaise, and little Nora Bailey, plunged gallantly into the new topic with spasmodic fervour that expended itself in a couple of minutes, and horribly emphasised the blank of silence that inevitably followed.  We talked as people talk who are passing the time while they wait for some great event.  But what event we could be awaiting, it was hard to imagine—­unless it were the sudden return of Brenda, with or without Banks.

And, even when we had all finished, and were free to separate, we still lingered for unnecessary minutes in the breakfast-room, as if we were compelled to maintain our pretence until the last possible moment.

Old Jervaise was the first to go.  He had made less effort to disguise his preoccupation than any of us, and now his exit had something of abruptness, as if he could no longer bear to maintain any further semblance of disguise.  One could only infer from the manner of his going that he passionately desired either solitude or the sole companionship of those with whom he could speak plainly of his distress.

We took our cue from him with an evident alacrity.  Every one looked as if he or she were saying something that began with a half-apologetic “Well...”; and Mrs. Jervaise interpreted our spirit when she remarked to the company in general, “Well, it’s very late, I’m afraid, and I dare say we’ve all got a lot to do before we start for church.  We shall have to leave soon after half-past ten,” she explained.