“There were some people,” went on the boy, and again he spoke in that queer, muffled whisper, almost as if the words were being dragged out of him against his will, “who thought”—­he stopped—­“who thought,” he repeated, “that Colonel Crofton did not take that poison knowingly.”

She told herself desperately that she must say something—­something ordinary, something of no account, before a power outside herself forced her to utter words which would lead to horror incalculable.

Speaking in such a loud discordant voice that Timmy quickly moved back a step or two, she exclaimed:  “I was not going to tell anybody yet—­but as you seem so anxious to know my plans, I will tell you a secret, Timmy.  I am going to India after all!  A splendid strong man, an officer and a gentleman who would have won the V.C. ten times over in any other war, and who would kill anyone who ever said a word against me, has asked me to be his wife, and to go out to India very, very soon.”

“And have you said you will?” he asked.

“Of course I have.”

“And will you be married soon?” went on her inquisitor.

“Yes, very soon,” she cried hysterically.  “As soon as possible!”

“Then you will have to leave Beechfield.”

She told herself with a kind of passionate rage that the child had no right to ask her such a silly, obvious question, and yet she answered at once:  “Of course I shall leave Beechfield.”

“And you will never come back?”

“I shall never, never come back.”  And then she added, almost as if in spite of herself, and with a kind of strange, bitter truthfulness very foreign to her:  “I don’t like Beechfield—­I don’t agree that it’s a pretty place—­I think it’s a hideous little village.”

There was a pause.  She was seeking for a phrase in which to say “Good-bye,” not so much to Timmy as to all the others.

“Will you go away to-morrow?” he asked, this time boldly.  And she answered, “Yes, to-morrow.”

“Perhaps I’d better not tell any of them at Old Place?” It was as if he was speaking to himself.

She clutched at the words.

“I would far rather you did not tell them—­I will write to them from London.  Can I trust you not to tell them, Timmy?”

He looked at her oddly.  “Jack and Rosamund will be sorry,” he said slowly.  And then he jerked his head—­his usual way of signifying “Good-bye” when he did not care to shake hands.

Turning round he walked out of the room, and she heard the front door bang after him, as also, after a moment or two, the outside door set in the garden wall.

Enid Crofton got up.  Though she was shaking—­shaking all over—­she walked swiftly across her little hall into the dining-room.  There she sat down at the writing-table, and took up the telephone receiver. “9846 Regent.”

It was the number of Harold Tremaine’s club.  She thought he would almost certainly be there just now.