She was putting questions.
I heard a reproach that seemed to fill the house: "You never came to meet us!"
And while the charge was ringing I felt, with anguish, the injustice of it. How could one have expected this woman to come!
But she should be moved and stirred at last!
"I sent my maid," she was defending herself, "—only a minute or two late."
"The other woman was not late!"
"Who?"
I begged the butler to get a cloak for Mrs. Harborough. She was saying Bettina and I should have waited. And again that I must calm myself and tell her——
"Someone pretended to be you!" I hurled it at her. "She took us to a house—a place where they do worse than murder. Betty is there now——" I told her all I could pack into a few sentences.
"It isn't possible," my aunt said. "This is England."