“Colonel Crofton and I were once engaged.  I went out to India to stay with my brother, and it happened there. Now we should have married.  But things were very different then.  When my father found Captain Crofton was not in a position to make what was then regarded as a proper settlement, he declared the engagement at an end.”

Janet felt touched.  There was such a depth of restrained feeling in her old friend’s voice.  Somehow it had never occurred to her that Olivia Pendarth could ever have been in love!

“It must be very painful for you to have her here,” she said involuntarily.

“In a way, yes.  But I suspected she was his widow from the first.”

“I think that, if I were you, I would say nothing to his sister,” observed Janet.

“Very well.  I will take your advice.”

She changed the subject abruptly.  “Let me know if Kate can be of any more use.  She’s quite anxious to go on helping you all.  She’s got so fond of Betty:  she says she’d do anything for her.”

“We’re managing all right now, and Godfrey really is a help, instead of a hindrance.  He actually suggested that he should do the washing-up this morning!”

“That’s the best thing I’ve ever heard of Godfrey Radmore,” exclaimed Miss Pendarth.  “I sincerely hope—­forgive me for saying so, Janet—­that there’s really nothing between him and Enid Crofton.  I should be sorry for my worst enemy to marry that woman, if the things I was told about her were true.”

“I don’t believe that he is thinking of her, consciously—­” Janet Tosswill spoke slowly, choosing her words.

“Of course she’s making a dead set at him.  But there’s safety in numbers, even here,” observed the other, grimly.  “I hear that your Jack simply lives at The Trellis House.  The whole village is talking about it.”

Jack?  Janet Tosswill felt vexed by what she considered a bit of stupid, vulgar, village gossip.  “Jack’s the most level-headed young man about women I’ve ever known,” she said, trying to speak pleasantly.  “If anyone has fallen in love with Mrs. Crofton, it’s our silly little Rosamund!”

CHAPTER XV

The morning after Janet Tosswill’s call at Rose Cottage, Rosamund followed her step-mother into the drawing-room immediately after breakfast, and observed plaintively that it did seem strange that “Enid” was never asked to Old Place.  “We take anything from her, and never give anything back,” she said.

Janet, who had a certain tenderness for the pretty black sheep of the family, checked the sharp retort which trembled on her lips.  Still, it was quite true that Rosamund had more than once been kept to lunch at The Trellis House, and that on the day of Nanna’s accident Mrs. Crofton had issued a sort of general invitation to supper to the young people of Old Place—­an invitation finally accepted, at Betty’s suggestion, by Godfrey Radmore and Rosamund.