"The missis says you can come up," she said ungraciously.
She eyed him curiously as he passed her, and scented drama in the set of his shoulders and the twitch of his fingers.
"A military!" she concluded, and tap-tapped down again into the kitchen.
A low fire was burning in the grate and the blind napped against the window. The draught blew the everlastings on the mantelpiece together with a little dry, dusty sound like the rustle of a breeze in dried twigs.
Mrs. Feverel sat bending over the fire, and he thought as he saw her that it would need a very great fire indeed to put any warmth into her. Her black hair, parted in the middle, was bound back tightly over her head and confined by a net.
She shook hands with him solemnly, and then waited as though she expected an explanation.
Harry smiled. "I'm afraid, Mrs. Feverel," he said, "that you may think this extraordinary. I can only offer as apology your acquaintance with my son."
"Ah yes—Mr. Robert Trojan."
Her mouth closed with a snap and she waited, with her hands folded on her lap, for him to say something further.
"You knew him, I think, at Cambridge in the summer?"