Mrs. Baines put down the blue-covered magazine and twisted her rocking-chair towards the table.

“You can pour out the tea,” said Mrs. Baines.

“Where’s Constance?”

“She’s not very well.  She’s lying down.”

“Anything the matter with her?”

“No.”

This was inaccurate.  Nearly everything was the matter with Constance, who had never been less Constance than during that afternoon.  But Mrs. Baines had no intention of discussing Constance’s love-affairs with Sophia.  The less said to Sophia about love, the better!  Sophia was excitable enough already!

They sat opposite to each other, on either side of the fire—­the monumental matron whose black bodice heavily overhung the table, whose large rounded face was creased and wrinkled by what seemed countless years of joy and disillusion; and the young, slim girl, so fresh, so virginal, so ignorant, with all the pathos of an unsuspecting victim about to be sacrificed to the minotaur of Time!  They both ate hot toast, with careless haste, in silence, preoccupied, worried, and outwardly nonchalant.

“And what has Miss Chetwynd got to say?” Mrs. Baines inquired.

“She wasn’t in.”

Here was a blow for Mrs. Baines, whose suspicions about Sophia, driven off by her certainties regarding Constance, suddenly sprang forward in her mind, and prowled to and fro like a band of tigers.

Still, Mrs. Baines was determined to be calm and careful.  “Oh!  What time did you call?”

“I don’t know.  About half-past four.”  Sophia finished her tea quickly, and rose.  “Shall I tell Mr. Povey he can come?”

(Mr. Povey had his tea after the ladies of the house.)

“Yes, if you will stay in the shop till I come.  Light me the gas before you go.”

Sophia took a wax taper from a vase on the mantelpiece, stuck it in the fire and lit the gas, which exploded in its crystal cloister with a mild report.

“What’s all that clay on your boots, child?” asked Mrs. Baines.

“Clay?” repeated Sophia, staring foolishly at her boots.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Baines.  “It looks like marl.  Where on earth have you been?”

She interrogated her daughter with an upward gaze, frigid and unconsciously hostile, through her gold-rimmed glasses.

“I must have picked it up on the roads,” said Sophia, and hastened to the door.

“Sophia!”

“Yes, mother.”

“Shut the door.”

Sophia unwillingly shut the door which she had half opened.

“Come here.”

Sophia obeyed, with falling lip.

“You are deceiving me, Sophia,” said Mrs. Baines, with fierce solemnity.  “Where have you been this afternoon?”

Sophia’s foot was restless on the carpet behind the table.  “I haven’t been anywhere,” she murmured glumly.

“Have you seen young Scales?”

“Yes,” said Sophia with grimness, glancing audaciously for an instant at her mother. ("She can’t kill me:  She can’t kill me,” her heart muttered.  And she had youth and beauty in her favour, while her mother was only a fat middle-aged woman.  “She can’t kill me,” said her heart, with the trembling, cruel insolence of the mirror-flattered child.)