“What an extraordinary thing!”

“I could hardly believe the story, but now that I’ve seen Mrs. Crofton, I’m not so very much surprised!”

“Then you have seen her?” Betty smiled.

“I’ve just had a glimpse of her,” admitted Miss Pendarth grudgingly, “as she came out of church, a day or two ago, with your sister Dolly.”

“She’s extraordinarily pretty, isn’t she?”

“Too theatrical for my taste.  But still, yes, I suppose one must admit that she will prove a very formidable rival to most of our young ladies.  I’m told she’s a war widow—­and she certainly behaves as if she were.”

“I don’t think it’s fair to say that!” Betty crimsoned.  She felt a close kinship to all those women who had lost someone they loved in the War.

“You mean not fair to the war widows?”

“Yes, that is what I do mean.  Only a few of them behave horridly—­”

There was a pause.  Betty was trying to bring herself to introduce the subject which filled her mind.  But Miss Pendarth was still full of the new tenant of The Trellis House.

“I hear that Timmy’s dog gave her a fearful fright.”

Betty felt astonished, well used as she was to the other’s almost uncanny knowledge of all that went on in the village.  Who could have told her this particular bit of gossip?

“I wonder,” went on the elder lady reflectively, “what made Mrs. Crofton come to Beechfield, of all places in the world.  Somehow she doesn’t look the sort of woman who would care for a country life.”

“Godfrey Radmore first told her of Beechfield,” said Betty, and in spite of herself, she felt the colour rise again hotly to her cheeks.

“Godfrey Radmore?” It was Miss Pendarth’s turn to be genuinely surprised. “Godfrey Radmore! Then she’s Australian?  I thought there was something odd about her.”

Betty smiled, but she felt irritated.  In some ways Miss Pendarth was surely very narrow-minded!

“No, she’s not Australian—­at least I’m pretty sure she’s not.  They met during the War, in Egypt.  Her husband was quartered there at the same time as Godfrey.”  She paused uncomfortably—­somehow she found it very difficult to go on and say what, after all, she had come here to say this morning.

“I suppose,” said Miss Pendarth at last, “that Godfrey Radmore is back in Brisbane by now.  One of the strange things about this war has been the way in which those who could have been best spared, escaped.”

In spite of herself, Betty smiled again.  “Godfrey has come back to England for good,” she said quietly, “he’s coming to-day for a long week-end.”

“D’you mean,” asked Miss Pendarth, “that he’s coming to stay with this Mrs. Crofton at The Trellis House?”

“Oh, no!” exclaimed Betty. (What odd ideas Miss Pendarth sometimes had.) “He’s coming to Old Place of course:  he telephoned to Janet from London, and proposed himself.”