She shut her eyes for a moment, and opened them to see Mrs. Ravenna looking at her with an air of concern; she held her head a little to one side, and had the air of a plump, kind bird.

“I startled you-I’m afraid I startled you.”

“A little,” said Margaret-“just a little-because I have heard of you-my mother spoke of you-when I was a child.”

“Not since then? Now that’s too bad! But we must make up for lost time. I’d like to have you come and lunch with me, right away if you can. Can you manage it? You’re not engaged?”

Margaret shook her head.

“Then I’ll go and speak to Madam. Just you wait.”

She went off smiling, and in a minute was back again.

“I’ve made love to her very successfully. I told her it was a very romantic meeting, and she says you may take an extra half hour. So we can have a real, good talk. We’ll come along to my hotel. I’m at The Luxe.”

Mrs. Ravenna was very comfortably installed at The Luxe, with a private sitting-room.

“My dear, you look starving,” she said to Margaret. “Now tell me, are you working too hard? Is that it? Serving tiresome women with hats they don’t really want? I’m one of them, and my conscience pinches me. You’ve no business to look so pale. I remember a little girl with a very nice bright colour.”

“I was late, and I hadn’t really time for my breakfast,” said Margaret.

Mrs. Ravenna was most dreadfully shocked.

“You lean right back and close your eyes, and don’t you say a single word till you’ve had some soup. You look positively frozen.”

The soup was deliciously hot. When Margaret had drunk it and was eating fish which tasted like some pleasantly new variety, Mrs. Ravenna removed the embargo on conversation.

“That’s better! I couldn’t talk to someone that I was expecting to faint all the time.”

Margaret laughed.

“I never faint.”

“I should faint in a minute if I didn’t have my breakfast. It would be very good for my figure, but I couldn’t do it-I don’t bother about it any more. If I bothered, I shouldn’t be so plump. But I can’t do with being bothered-it’s so worrying. And I’d rather be plump than have my face all over lines. Why, I know women that spend every morning in a beauty parlour, and they’ve got twice as many lines as I have. Of course it’s lovely if you can have it both ways-no lines and a willowy figure. But that’s only for the very, very few. Now your mother-”

Margaret laid down her fork.

“Yes, do tell me about my mother.”

“Oh, she was looking very well. Of course I only saw her for a moment.”

“Mrs. Ravenna!”

“Yes?” The little lady put her head on one side.

“Please-what did you say?”

“I said that Esther was looking very well-and so she was. My dear, what’s the matter?”

“You haven’t heard-” Margaret had to force her voice.

Mrs. Ravenna was plainly startled.

“What! You don’t mean! Oh, my dear girl! When?”

“Six months ago.”

Mrs. Ravenna sat up straight.

“Margaret Langton, you’re not telling me your mother died six months ago?”

Margaret said, “Yes.”

“Your mother-Esther Langton-Esther Pelham?”

“Yes.”

“But I saw her.”

“Where did you see her?”

“It was only for a minute, but I made sure. My dear, you don’t know how you’ve shocked me. I did see her.”

Margaret held the arms of her chair.

“Mrs. Ravenna-won’t you tell me-what you mean?”

“I thought I saw her-and you tell me-six months ago? Impossible! Oh, I can’t believe it! She looked so well.”

Margaret shut her eyes for a moment. The room was turning round. Mrs. Ravenna’s voice came from a long way off.

“My dear, how cruel of me! But I didn’t know. I certainly thought I saw her.”

She opened her eyes.

“My mother died six months ago in Hungary. They were travelling-for her healths-and she died.” Margaret’s voice was slow and low.

Mrs. Ravenna gave a little sharp cry.

“Six months ago? But I saw her! My dear, I saw her, only a fortnight ago in Vienna.”

“I-Mrs. Ravenna!”

“My dear, I thought I saw her.”

“Did you speak to her?”

“I hadn’t a chance. I was ever so vexed. You can’t think how vexed I was. My train was just starting. I was leaning out of the window waving good-bye to the friend I’d been staying with, and I saw Esther in the crowd.”

Her grief closed down on Margaret’s heart.

“It was a mistake.”

“I suppose it must have been. But, my dear-such a resemblance. She was standing looking up with the light shining on her. I thought how little she had changed. I waved to her, and I called out, and I thought she recognized me.”

Margaret made a little sound of protest.

“It was a mistake.”

“I thought she recognized me. You know how a person looks when they know you-she looked like that. And then I was ever so disappointed because she didn’t wave to me or anything-she just turned and walked away. I was ever so disappointed.”

“It was somebody else,” said Margaret, with sad finality.

CHAPTER XXXIII

Charles did his duty by Miss Greta Wilson for a couple of hours. He let her drive and entertained her to the best of his ability. She talked continuously.

“Margaret was rather odd this morning. Charles, didn’t you think Margaret was rather odd this morning? I did. Do you think she was angry because of my going away?”

“I think she’ll be able to bear up without you.”

“What a frightfully horrid thing to say! I don’t like you a bit when you say things like that. Archie never says things like that.” She giggled and swerved dangerously right across the road. “Charles, why does it do that?”

Charles kept a steadying hand on the wheel.

“Keep your eye on the road,” he said sternly.

“I only looked at you,” said Greta in an injured voice. “Archie likes to have me look at him. Yesterday, when I looked at him, he said I’d got eyes like blue flowers-he did really.”

“You weren’t driving a car. You keep your eye on the road.”

“I am keeping it on the road. Archie likes me to look at him. He did say that about my eyes. Are they like blue flowers, Charles?”

“You keep ’em on the road,” said Charles firmly.

Greta recurred to Margaret.

“You didn’t answer about Margaret. Shall I like Archie’s cousin? Is she like Archie? I don’t think Archie would make a pretty girl. Do you? Do you think Margaret is pretty?”

“No,” said Charles.

He had often thought her beautiful.

“You’ve known her a frightfully long time, haven’t you? You know, she won’t tell me whether she was ever really engaged or not. But I think she must have been. Don’t you? Of course I was only teasing her about the blue dressing-gown. But I think she must have been engaged really, and perhaps there’s some frightfully romantic reason why she isn’t married. Sometimes I think it’s rather ordinary to get married, and that it would really be more romantic to have a hopeless attachment. Perhaps Margaret has got a frightfully romantic hopeless attachment. Do you think she has?”

“Among the Drastik Indians women who ask questions are buried alive,” said Charles.

Greta gave a little shriek and did another swerve.

“Charles, it did it again! Why does it do it?”

“Because you look round at me. I’m going to drive now, and then you can look at me as much as you like.”

When he had handed her over to Ernestine Foster, he went rather reluctantly to call on Miss Silver.

She was knitting an infant’s pale blue woolly coat. A white silk handkerchief lay in her lap. When she saw Charles, she wrapped the pale blue coat in the handkerchief and dropped it into her knitting-bag. She said “Good-morning,” and then in the same breath,

“I’m very glad you’ve come.”

Charles was wishing the interview well over; he was wishing he had never come at all. Every time it got more difficult to steer a course between Greta’s safety and Margaret’s.