, tell us this terrible story?'

Clare sobbed that she hadn't been able to bear it on her mind any more,
and also that she hadn't known till lately that Gideon was suspected.

Lord and Lady Pinkerton looked at each other, wondering what to believe,
then at Jane, wishing she was gone, so that they could ask Clare more
about it. Jane said, 'Don't mind me. I don't mind hearing about it.' Jane
meant to stay. She thought that if she was gone they would persuade Clare
she had dreamed it all and that it had been really Gideon after all.

Jane asked Clare why she had pushed Oliver, thinking that she ought to
explain, and not cry. But still Clare only cried, and at last said she
couldn't ever tell any one. Lady Pinkerton turned pink, and Lord
Pinkerton walked up and down and said, 'Tut tut,' and it was more obvious
than ever what Clare meant.

She added, 'But I never meant, indeed I never meant, to hurt him. He just
fell back, and ...'

'Was killed,' Jane finished for her. Jane thought Clare was like their
mother in trying to avoid plain words for disagreeable things.

Clare cried and cried. 'Oh,' she said, 'I've not had a happy moment
since,' which was as nearly true as these excessive statements ever are.

Lady Pinkerton tried to calm her, and said, 'My poor, dear child, you
don't know what you are saying. You must go to bed now, and tell us in
the morning, when you are more yourself.'

Clare didn't go to bed until Lord Pinkerton had promised to ring up the
_Haste_. Then she went, with Lady Pinkerton, who was crying too now,
because she was beginning to believe the story.

2

Jane didn't know what she believed. She didn't believe what Clare had
implied--that Oliver had tried to kiss her. Because Oliver hadn't been
like that; it wasn't the sort of thing he did. Jane thought it caddish of
Clare to have tried to make them think that of him. But she might, Jane
thought, have been angry with him about something else; she might have
pushed him.... Or she might not; she might be imagining or inventing the
whole thing. You never knew, with Clare.

If it was true, Jane thought, she had been a fool about Arthur. But, if
he hadn't done it, why had he been so queer? Why had he avoided her, and
been so odd and ashamed from the first morning on?

Perhaps, thought Jane, he had suspected Clare.

She would see him to-morrow morning, and ask him.

3

Jane saw Gideon next day. She rang him up, and he came over to Hampstead