She took train to York Road Station, and thence, as the night was fine, walked to Chelsea.  This semblance of freedom, together with the sense of having taken a courageous resolve, raised her spirits.  She hoped that a detective might be tracking her; the futility of such measures afforded her a contemptuous satisfaction.  Not to arrive before the appointed hour she loitered on Chelsea Embankment, and it gave her pleasure to reflect that in doing this she was outraging the proprieties.  Her mind was in a strange tumult of rebellious and distrustful thought.  She had determined on making a confession to Rhoda; but would she benefit by it?  Was Rhoda generous enough to appreciate her motives?  It did not matter much.  She would have discharged a duty at the expense of such shame, and this fact alone might strengthen her to face the miseries beyond.

As she stood at Miss Barfoot’s door he heart quailed.  To the servant who opened she could only speak Miss Nunn’s name; fortunately instructions had been given, and she was straightway led to the library.  Here she waited for nearly five minutes.  Was Rhoda doing this on purpose?  Her face, when at length she entered, made it seem probable’, a cold dignity, only not offensive haughtiness, appeared in her bearing.  She did not offer to shake hands, and used no form of civility beyond requesting her visitor to be seated.

‘I am going away,’ Monica began, when silence compelled her to speak.

‘Yes, so you told me.’

‘I can see that you can’t understand why I have come.’

‘Your note only said that you wished to see me.’

Their eyes met, and Monica knew in the moment that succeeded that she was being examined from head to foot.  It seemed to her that she had undertaken something beyond her strength; her impulse was to invent a subject of brief conversation and escape into the darkness.  But Miss Nunn spoke again.

‘Is it possible that I can be of any service to you?’

‘Yes.  You might be.  But—­I find it is very difficult to say what I—­’

Rhoda waited, offering no help whatever, not even that of a look expressing interest.

‘Will you tell me, Miss Nunn, why you behave so coldly to me?’

‘Surely that doesn’t need any explanation, Mrs. Widdowson?’

‘You mean that you believe everything Mr. Widdowson has said?’

’Mr. Widdowson has said nothing to me.  But I have seen your sister, and there seemed no reason to doubt what she told me.’

‘She couldn’t tell you the truth, because she doesn’t know it.’

‘I presume she at least told no untruth.’

‘What did Virginia say?  I think I have a right to ask that.’

Rhoda appeared to doubt it.  She turned her eyes to the nearest bookcase, and for a moment reflected.

‘Your affairs don’t really concern me, Mrs. Widdowson,’ she said at length.  ’They have been forced upon my attention, and perhaps I regard them from a wrong point of view.  Unless you have come to defend yourself against a false accusation, is there any profit in our talking of these things?’