“You’re very oracular to-day, Edith. What is it?”
“Her mother practically said that she didn’t understand that girl, but did know that she still felt very strangely about her father’s death.”
“One can imagine that.”
“Yes, of course, but it works in a curious way on her mind. She imagines herself linked with it in some odd fashion and won’t think of marrying till the thing is cleared up, which, of course, it never will be now. She argues that she has her father’s blood and all that, and she may have inherited some kind of threat or danger or whatever it was that killed him. The very idea seems grotesque to me, but there you are.”
“What else did Mrs. Millicent say?”
“Very little more about Jean, and nothing of her husband, but she did talk about Perkins and Martin. I suppose she wanted to reassure me.”
“Anything new about them?”
“Nothing much. Perkins seems to have been just as invaluable to them as she is to me. You know, Jack, I’ve rather changed my mind about that woman.”
“In what way? Perkins hasn’t changed that I can see.”
“Not a fraction. She looks just as forbidding and severe and wet-blankety as ever, and that used to worry me more than you ever knew. Also I was puzzled about you, and the influence the place seemed to be getting over you, upsetting your work. I’ve got over that now, and Perkins has turned out a regular trump. I’m beginning to see what’s behind that manner of hers.”