“Would it be taking too great a liberty, miss, to ask how you came to want to come back here, after all these years? For you must have remembered too, what happened, and have felt uncomfortable about it, I should think?”
Rhoda blushed hotly.
“Of course I knew what happened, through the newspapers and what I was told,” she said. “But I didn’t think it could matter. How should it? I didn’t know anything.”
“No, miss.”
Mrs. Hawkes looked down again.
“May I venture to ask whether you found the master altered, miss?”
Rhoda’s lips trembled a little as she replied:
“Yes, I did. He doesn’t look so young, of course, as he did then.”
“Nor so happy,” suggested the housekeeper almost under her breath. “And do you still think him as handsome as you did?”
Rhoda tried to laugh.