At last, when she had quite finished, she looked up defiantly.

“Haven’t you anything better to do than to stare at me like that?” she said irritably.  “Murder or no murder, I’ve got to get up!  Go away—­do!”

And Bunting went off into the next room.

After he had gone, his wife lay back and closed her eyes.  She tried to think of nothing.  Nay, more—­so strong, so determined was her will that for a few moments she actually did think of nothing.  She felt terribly tired and weak, brain and body both quiescent, as does a person who is recovering from a long, wearing illness.

Presently detached, puerile thoughts drifted across the surface of her mind like little clouds across a summer sky.  She wondered if those horrid newspaper men were allowed to shout in Belgrave Square; she wondered if, in that case, Margaret, who was so unlike her brother-in-law, would get up and buy a paper.  But no.  Margaret was not one to leave her nice warm bed for such a silly reason as that.

Was it to-morrow Daisy was coming back?  Yes—­to-morrow, not to-day.  Well, that was a comfort, at any rate.  What amusing things Daisy would be able to tell about her visit to Margaret!  The girl had an excellent gift of mimicry.  And Margaret, with her precise, funny ways, her perpetual talk about “the family,” lent herself to the cruel gift.

And then Mrs. Bunting’s mind—­her poor, weak, tired mind—­wandered off to young Chandler.  A funny thing love was, when you came to think of it—­which she, Ellen Bunting, didn’t often do.  There was Joe, a likely young fellow, seeing a lot of young women, and pretty young women, too,—­quite as pretty as Daisy, and ten times more artful—­and yet there!  He passed them all by, had done so ever since last summer, though you might be sure that they, artful minxes, by no manner of means passed him by,—­without giving them a thought!  As Daisy wasn’t here, he would probably keep away to-day.  There was comfort in that thought, too.

And then Mrs. Bunting sat up, and memory returned in a dreadful turgid flood.  If Joe did come in, she must nerve herself to hear all that—­that talk there’d be about The Avenger between him and Bunting.

Slowly she dragged herself out of bed, feeling exactly as if she had just recovered from an illness which had left her very weak, very, very tired in body and soul.

She stood for a moment listening—­listening, and shivering, for it was very cold.  Considering how early it still was, there seemed a lot of coming and going in the Marylebone Road.  She could hear the unaccustomed sounds through her closed door and the tightly fastened windows of the sitting-room.  There must be a regular crowd of men and women, on foot and in cabs, hurrying to the scene of The Avenger’s last extraordinary crime.

She heard the sudden thud made by their usual morning paper falling from the letter-box on to the floor of the hall, and a moment later came the sound of Bunting quickly, quietly going out and getting it.  She visualised him coming back, and sitting down with a sigh of satisfaction by the newly-lit fire.