There was Wemyss, opening Lucy's door at the same moment.
'Oh how do you do, Everard,' said Miss Entwhistle, advancing with all the precipitate and affectionate politeness of one who is greeting not only a host but a nephew.
'Quite well thank you,' was Everard's slightly unexpected reply; but logical, perfectly logical.
She held out her hand and he shook it, and then proceeded past her to her bedroom door, which she had left open, and switched off the light, which she had left on.
'Oh I'm sorry,' said Miss Entwhistle.
'That,' she thought, 'is one to Everard.'
She waited for his return, and then walked, followed by him in silence, down the stairs.
'How do you find Lucy?' she asked when they had got to the bottom. She didn't like Everard's silences; she remembered several of them during that difference of opinion he and she had had about where Christmas should be spent. They weighed on her; and she had the sensation of wriggling beneath them like an earwig beneath a stone, and it humiliated her to wriggle.
'Just as I expected,' he said. 'Perfectly well.'
'Oh no—not perfectly well,' exclaimed Miss Entwhistle, a vision of the blue-wrapped little figure sitting weakly up against the pillows that afternoon before her eyes. 'She is better to-day, but not nearly well.'