“Could you not tell me?” she murmured.
“I am afraid not.”
She fidgeted and came a little closer, as though she liked the nearness of his handsome presence.
“Very well, you shall see her, but you won’t be able to talk to her. Come with me.”
They went from the room and upstairs. Miss Pursill opened a door on the first floor and beckoned Charles to enter. It was a bedroom, furnished on the same scale of antique magnificence as the drawing-room downstairs. In a deep armchair in front of a fire sat an old woman, tucked up in an eiderdown of blue and white satin. She did not look round as they entered, but remained quite still—an immobile figure with a nodding head.
“That is Mrs. Pursill,” said her daughter.
Charles glanced at the old woman in the chair and turned away. She was past anything except waiting for death, and it was impossible to speak to her or question her. She was in the last stage of senile decay. He masked his disappointment with an effort, conscious that the eyes of the younger woman were fixed on his face.
“If there is anything I can tell you—” she simpered, as she met his glance.
His face betrayed his anxiety.
“I had some reason to think that a young lady of my acquaintance, the daughter of an old friend of your mother’s, might be staying with her.”