The next moment her heart leapt, a live thing within her, then lay still.  Every action through her body seemed suspended.  She scarcely realized her physical existence at all.  It was as though she were conscious only of mind, mind that was filled with perplexity, astonishment, consternation, a mind that was being buffeted by winds from every quarter of the compass of sensation.  And through it all, she struggled to drive words together into sentences, words, that like a flock of witless sheep upon open ground, would not be driven, but ran this way and jumped that in a frolicsome imbecility of purpose.

And there she stood, just within the room, while Mrs. Durlacher with slowly uplifting eyebrows of amazement rose gradually from the comfortable armchair to her feet.

“Aren’t you Miss—­Miss—?” She tried to catch the name in the air with her fingers.

“Bishop,” said Sally, with dry lips.

“Yes, of course, Bishop—­Miss Bishop?”

Sally half inclined her head.

“But what—?” she hesitated, knowing that the rest of her sentence must be obvious, yet gaining time to put the matter together—­fit it to the whole from its separate parts.  This was the girl whom she had met that night in Jack’s room—­the girl he had called a lady.  They were still acquainted, still friends—­greater friends than ever, since he had brought her down with him to Apsley.  Were they married?  Married secretly?  She was a thousand times better dressed than she had been before.  The thought tasted bitter.  She swallowed the possibility of it with undeniable courage.

“Have you come down here with my brother?” she asked, still in assumed bewilderment.

“Yes,” replied Sally.  “We—­we came down in a taxi-cab.”

“But he never said he was bringing any one.  He wrote.  I—­I thought he was going to be alone.”

Nothing could be said to this.  To apologize for her presence there would be ridiculous.  Sally said nothing.

“Well,” Mrs. Durlacher smiled, brushing away her surprise with that half-breath of laughter which throws a thin wrapping of amusement about a wealth of contemptuous resignation.  “I’m afraid we haven’t got much of a lunch to offer you.  I expect you’ll be very discontented with the slight fare I have provided for Jack and myself.  He ought to have told me.  Do come into the room, won’t you?  Wouldn’t you like to take off your coat?”

So, with that ease of apparent hospitality, she made her guest as uncomfortable as possible, a glutton for the slightest sign of embarrassment from Sally.  Her gluttony was well served.  The poor child pitiably looked once through the door, straining eager ears for the sound of Traill’s footsteps; then she closed it and came to the fireplace, taking the first chair that offered.