“I am afraid,” said Agnes, unfolding a letter that she had received in the morning, “that things go far from satisfactorily at Cadover.”
The three were alone at supper. It was the June of Rickie’s second year at Sawston.
“Indeed?” said Herbert, who took a friendly interest. “In what way?
“Do you remember us talking of Stephen—Stephen Wonham, who by an odd coincidence—”
“Yes. Who wrote last year to that miserable failure Varden. I do.”
“It is about him.”
“I did not like the tone of his letter.”
Agnes had made her first move. She waited for her husband to reply to it. But he, though full of a painful curiosity, would not speak. She moved again.
“I don’t think, Herbert, that Aunt Emily, much as I like her, is the kind of person to bring a young man up. At all events the results have been disastrous this time.”
“What has happened?”