Mrs. Knox seconded her niece admirably. "It would not be safe, Julia. A person capable of all this would not hesitate to poison our food."
Agatha accepted this tribute without comment. "Will you pack Mr. Forbes' things yourself?" she said, addressing Julia.
Again Mrs. Knox intervened. "Julia, I forbid you to go into that house, with this girl, and that dreadful, crazy creature—"
Forbes interrupted with signs of irritation. "You said that once before. There is no insane woman here."
"I am afraid you are not a very good judge of what is or is not here, Mr. Forbes," replied Aunt Estelle, scoring again. "We had a most unpleasant encounter with a woman clearly insane. She positively gibbered."
"Yes, Burton," Julia cried with shrewish enjoyment, "you have been made a laughing-stock all summer, poor dear. You've kept writing about this fine old place. I wish you could see it. It's simply in the last stages of dilapidation."
"It's ready to fall to pieces," corroborated Aunt Estelle. "I didn't venture inside, but the glimpses of the interior I got from the window showed that everything was fairly moth-eaten."
"Yes," Agatha admitted quietly. "We are very poor, so poor that a blind boarder seemed providential. Won't you sit on the porch till the carriage is ready?" she added politely. "I'm sure Mr. Forbes is tired after his long walk."
"Oh, please," protested Julia, her self-control shaken by the other's calm, "please drop this pretext of being so interested in Mr. Forbes' welfare. After the fraud you have practised on him all summer you can hardly expect him to believe anything you say."
"Oh, no," said Agatha. "I don't expect that for a moment. And now if you're sure you won't eat a little luncheon, I'll bid you all good afternoon." She went across the grass to the house, carrying herself with her chin high, moving deliberately. No one could have guessed the fact of which she was so certain, that during the encounter she had ceased to be a girl, that she had leaped without any intervening stages of maturity and middle life, straight to old age, that dreadful old age, beyond hope or joy, the age that is death in life. Agatha remembered wonderingly that once the mere flicker of sunshine through leaves, the mere fragrance of a flower, had a magic to quicken her pulses.