"Hold on!" said Henry. "Look out, Millie! The table's very shaky and if the plates are broken King will make me pay at least twice what they're worth. You know it's a funny thing, but I'm seeing just the other side of the picture. Your people have just got all their money, my people have just lost all theirs. Before the war, so far as I can make out, Duncombe was quite well off. Most of it came from land, and that's gone down and the Income Tax has come up, and there's hardly anything left. They think they'll have to sell Duncombe Hall which has been in the family for centuries, and that will pretty well break their hearts I fancy."
"They? Who's they?" asked Millie.
"There's a sister," said Henry. "Lady Bell-Hall—Margaret She's the funniest little woman you ever saw. She's a widow. Her husband died in the war—of general shock I should fancy—air-raids and money and impertinence from the lower classes. The widow nearly died from the same thing. She always wears black and a bonnet, and jumps if any one makes the least sound. At the same time she's as proud as Lucifer and good too. She's just bewildered. She can't understand things at all. The word written on her heart when she comes to die will be Bolshevist. She talks all the time and it's from her I know all this!"
"And Duncombe himself? What's he like?" asked Millie.
"Oh, he's queer! I like him but I can't make out what he thinks. He never shows any sign. He will, I suppose, before long. I shall make so many muddles and mistakes that I shall just be shown the door at the end of the month. However, he can't say I didn't warn him. I told him from the beginning just what I was. I know I'm going to have an awful time with those letters. They all look so exactly alike, and many of them haven't got any dates at all, and then I go off dreaming. It's almost impossible not to in that library. It's full of ghosts, and the letters are full of ghosts as well. And I'm sorry for those two. It must be awful, everything that you believe in going, the only world you've ever known coming to an end before your eyes, every one denying all the things you've believed in and laughing at them. He's brave, old Duncombe. He'll go down fighting."
"And what's the other thing?" said Millie, sitting down on the bed again, "that you were going to tell me?"
Henry told his adventure. He did not look at Millie as he told it; he did not want to see whether she approved or disapproved; he was afraid that she would laugh. She laughed at so many things, and most of all he was afraid lest she should say something about the girl. If she did say anything he would have to stand it.
After all Millie had not seen her. . . . So he talked, staring at the little pink clouds that were now forming beyond the window just over the "Comedy" roof—they were like lumps of coral against the sky—three, four, five . . . then they merged into two billowing pillows of colour, slowly fading into a deep crimson, then breaking into long strips of orange lazily forming against a blue that grew paler and paler and at last, as he ended, was white like water under glass.
He stopped.
"How long ago was all this?" Millie asked at last.