Edith, standing in the upper hall, listening to Mrs. Newbolt at Eleanor’s bedside, exclaiming, and repeating her dear mother’s ideas about catching cold, and offering more hot-water bottles, had her thoughts:  “I won’t go into the room—­she would hate to see me!  The doctor said she had fallen into some water.  Did she—­do it on purpose?  Oh, was it my fault?” Edith’s heart pounded with terror:  “Was it what I said to her in the garden that made her do it?”

Mrs. Newbolt, in a blue-flannel dressing gown, and in and out of the spare room with sibilant whispers of anxiety, had, for once, more thoughts than words; her words were only, “I’ve always expected it!” But her thoughts would have filled volumes!  Mrs. Newbolt had put her hair in order for the night, and now her crimping pins made the shadow of her head, bobbing on the ceiling, look like a gigantic spider.

Eleanor had just one hazy thought:  “I tried ...  I tried—­and I failed.”

Other people, however, didn’t feel so sure that she had failed.  She “looks like death,” Mrs. Newbolt told Edith the next morning.  “We’ve got to find Maurice!  Edith, why do you suppose she—­did it?”

“Oh, but she didn’t!” Edith said.  “What sense would there be—­”

“Don’t talk about ‘sense’!  Eleanor never had any.  I’ve telegraphed your mother to come.  I wonder how Bingo is?  She understands her.  The ashman has broken my new ash barrel; I don’t know what this country is comin’ to!”

Then she went upstairs to try to understand Eleanor herself.  “Eleanor, what happened?”

“Nothing.  I’m going home this afternoon.”

“Indeed you are not!  You’re not goin’ out of this house till Maurice comes and gets you! What happened?” she demanded again.

“I fell.  Into some water.”

“How could you ‘fall’?  And what ’water’?”

“I had gone out to the river—­up in Medfield.  To—­take a walk; and I ... slipped....”

“Now, Eleanor, look here; if I have a virtue, it’s candor, and I’ll tell you why; it saves time.  That’s what my dear father used to say:  ‘Lyin’ wastes time.’  I know what you tried to do; and it was very wicked.”

“But I didn’t do it!”

“You tried to.  If you and Maurice have quarreled, I’ll stand by you.”

Eleanor covered her face with her hands—­and Mrs. Newbolt burst out, “He’s treated you badly!  You needn’t try to deceive me,—­he’s been flirtin’ with some woman?” Her pale, prominent eyes snapped with anger.

“Oh, Auntie, don’t!  He hasn’t!  Only, I—­wanted to make him happier; and so I—­” She broke into furious crying.  Despairing crying.

Instantly Mrs. Newbolt was all frightened solicitude.  “There!  Don’t cry!  Have a hot-water bag.  They say there’s a new kind on the market.  I must get a new pair of rubbers.  Your face is awfully bruised.  He’s puffectly happy!  He worships the ground you walk on!  Eleanor, don’t cry.  How’s your cold?  The ashman—­”