"Will you take her down to the visitors' room, doctor?" she said. "I'm just going off duty. I didn't tell you before, Miss Burbridge, but your mother is here—she's been here nearly an hour."
Mother was sitting with her back to the orange curtains. As I entered the room I became conscious of the faint scent of jasmine with which I always associated her.
"How did you know I was here?" I said involuntarily.
"I wired to Cromer Court that I must see you, and Cheneston wired back that you were away in the North for a few days. I was puzzled. I showed the letter to Grace Gilpin, and she suggested that you had come to see Captain Markham. Why did Cheneston let you come, and why did you come?"
"I wanted to and he wanted me to," I said.
I thought it very clever of Grace Gilpin to guess and send mother here, it made it so much easier for Cheneston and her if I could be caught with the man I was supposed to be in love with.
"I knew that you knew no one in the North; but for Grace I should never have thought. I didn't believe I should find you here."
"But you have," I said wearily. "What do you want?"
"Pam," mother said baldly, "are you in love with Walter Markham?"
I wish I didn't feel so horribly tired and done. I knew I could never be subtle and evasive with mother, somehow she always knocked over my defences and surprised the truth in me. She had a way of taking my deepest and most secret feelings by the scruff of the neck and dragging them ruthlessly into the light—almost as if she wanted to see if their ears were clean.