“Did you see the man’s face?”
“No,” said Elsie, with ashen lips.
“But you know who it was?”
“It was Leslie Morrison.”
The room reeled before her eyes, and she made an ineffectual clutch at a chair.
Through a sort of thick fog she heard the official repeating in a low tone: “It was the man known as Leslie Morrison.”
Then she felt herself fall.
Her mother was with her when she recovered consciousness, and the woman who had attended to her before, and whom Mrs. Palmer now repeatedly and volubly addressed as “Matron.”
Elsie looked round her, but the officials were gone. With a groan she let her head drop backwards again on to the rail of the chair in which she found herself.
“Come along now, don’t give way. You’re better now,” said the matron briskly. “Don’t let yourself go, Mrs. Williams.”