Mirabelle stared at her.
“You mean . . . they’re guarding the house?”
“That’s how it strikes me,” said Alma bitterly. “Why they should interfere with us, I don’t know. Anyway, they let him in. Mr. Johnson Lee.”
The girl frowned.
“I don’t know the name,” she said.
Alma walked to the window.
“There’s his car,” she said, and pointed.
It was just visible, standing at the side of the road beyond the box hedge, a long-bodied Rolls, white with dust. The chauffeur was talking to a strange man, and from the fact that he was smoking a pipe Mirabelle guessed that this was one of her self-appointed custodians.
She had her bath, and with the assistance of the nurse, dressed and came shakily down the stairs. Alma was waiting in the brick-floored hall.
“He wants to see you alone,” she said in a stage whisper. “I don’t know whether I ought to allow it, but there’s evidently something wrong. These men prowling about the house have got thoroughly on my nerves.”