“Which is?” I prompted her.

“No conveyance,” she explained.  “There aren’t any Sunday trains on the loop line, Hurley Junction is fifteen miles away, and the Jervaises’ car is Heaven knows where and the only other that is borrowable, Mr. Turnbull’s, is derelict just outside the Park gates.”

I thought she was rather inclined to make a song of it all, genuinely thankful to have so sound an excuse for staying to witness the dramatic developments that might possibly be in store for us.  I do not deny that I appreciated her feeling in that matter.

“And the horses?” I suggested.

“Too far for them, in the omnibus,” she said.  “And nothing else would be big enough for four people and their luggage.  But, as a matter of fact, Nora and I talked it all over with Mrs. Jervaise before prayers, and she said we weren’t to think of going—­especially as it was all right, now, about Brenda.”

“I’m glad it is all right, if only for old Jervaise’s sake,” I said, craftily.

She looked up at me, trying to guess how far I was honest in that remark.

“But you don’t really believe...” she said.

“I don’t see why not,” I returned.

“That Brenda has come back?”

“Mrs. Jervaise said...”

“Had to, of course,” Miss Tattersall replied curtly.

I pursed my mouth and shook my head.  “It would be too risky to deceive us as crudely as that,” I said.  “Make it so much more significant if we discovered that they had been lying about her.”

Miss Tattersall looked obstinate, putting on that wooden enduring expression peculiar to fair people with pale eyes.

“I don’t believe she has come back,” she said.

I continued to argue.  I guessed that she had some piece of evidence in reserve; also, that for some reason she was afraid to produce it.  And at last, as I had hoped, my foolish, specious arguments and apparent credulity irritated her to a pitch of exasperation.

“Oh! you can talk till all’s blue,” she broke in with a flash of temper, “but she hasn’t come back.”

“But...”  I began.

“I know she hasn’t,” Miss Tattersall said, and the pink of her cheeks spread to her forehead and neck like an overflowing stain.

“Of course if you know...”  I conceded.

“I do,” she affirmed, still blushing.

I realised that the moment had come for conciliation.  “This is tremendously interesting,” I said.

She looked up at me with a question in her face, but I did not understand until she spoke, that what had been keeping back her confession was not doubt of my trustworthiness but her fear of losing my good opinion.

“I expect you’ll think it was horrid of me,” she said.

I made inarticulate sounds intended to convey an effect of reassurance.

“You will,” she insisted, and gave her protest a value that I felt to be slightly compromising.  I could only infer that the loss of my good opinion would be fatal to her future happiness.