"I won't come up now," he said to Jan. "Please tell Mrs. Tancred I'll look in about tea-time."
As Jan entered the lift and vanished from his sight, Peter reflected, "So that's the much-talked-of Jan! Well, I'm not surprised Fay wanted her."
The lift stopped. An elderly white-clad butler stood salaaming at an open door, and Jan followed him.
A few steps through a rather narrow passage and she was in a large light room opening on to a verandah, and in the centre stood her sister Fay, with outstretched arms.
A pathetic, inarticulate, worn and faded Fay: her pretty freshness dimmed. A Fay with dark circles round her hollow eyes and all the living light gone from her abundant fair hair. It was as though her face was covered by an impalpable grey mask.
There was no doubt about it. Fay looked desperately ill. Ill in a way not to be accounted for by her condition.
Clinging together they sat down on an immense sofa, exchanging trivial question and answer as to the matters ordinary happy folk
discuss when they first meet after a long absence. Jan asked for the children, who had not yet returned from their early morning walk with the ayah. Fay asked about the voyage and friends at home, and told Jan she had got dreadfully grey; then kissed her and leant against her just as she used to do when they were both children and she needed comfort.
Jan said nothing to Fay about her looks, and neither of them so much as mentioned Hugo Tancred. But Jan felt a wild desire to get away by herself and cry and cry over this sad wraith of the young sister whose serene and happy beauty had been the family pride.
And yet she was so essentially the same Fay, tender and loving and inconsequent, and full of pretty cares for Jan's comfort.