“Why, that was your old place.”

“It was.”

“Did you find it much changed—bourgeois, and all that?” said Ethel.

“Nothing could really change the old place to me; but I would rather not talk of what the Carters have done.”

“I am sure it must have given you profound agony,” said Ethel.

Angela faintly coloured, and then she said:

“Tell me about your little sister, the one about whom you are so anxious.”

“Oh, Nesta! Nesta’s all right.”

“Then she has come back?”

“No; she hasn’t come back; we can’t imagine where she is.”