"Then you have done something?" said Lady Charlotte.
"She's always crying," said Sarah, "and she calls her kitten Alice," as though that were explanation sufficient.
The strange truth remains, however, that the night that followed this conversation was the first unpleasant one that Sarah had ever spent; she remained awake during a great part of it. It was as though the hours that she had spent on that other afternoon, compelling, from her own dark room, Mary's will, had attached Mary to her. Mary was there with her now, in her bedroom. Mary, red-nosed, sniffing, her eyes wide and staring.
"I want to go home."
"Silly little thing," thought Sarah. "I wish I'd never played with her."
In the morning Sarah was tired and white-faced. She would speak to no one. After luncheon she found her hat and coat for herself, let herself out of the house, and walked to Mrs. Kitson's, and was shown into the wide, untidy drawing-room, where books and flowers and papers had a lost and strayed air as though a violent wind had blown through the place and disturbed everything.
Mrs. Kitson came in.
"You, dear?" she said.
Sarah looked at the room and then at Mrs. Kitson. Her eyes said: "What a place! What a woman! What a fool!"
"Yes, I've come to explain about Mary."