The dining-room door closed softly on the whispered words: "Puffect nonsense. Of course we know."
Maurice, tiptoeing into Eleanor's room, thought she was asleep, and was backing out again, when she opened drowsy eyes and said, faintly, "Hullo."
He bent over to kiss her. "Well, you're a great girl, to cut up like this when I'm away from home!"
She smiled, closed her eyes, and he tiptoed out of the room....
Back again in the parlor, he began, "Mrs. Houghton, for Heaven's sake, tell me the whole thing!" He wasn't anxious now; as far as he could see, Eleanor was "all right"—just sleepy. But what on earth—
She told him what she knew; what she suspected, she kept to herself. But she might as well have told it all. For, as he listened, his face darkened with understanding.
"The river? In Medfield? But, why—?"
"Edith says you and she had a good deal of sentiment about the river, and—"
"At six o'clock, on a March evening?" said Maurice. He put his hands in his pockets and began to walk up and down. Mrs. Houghton had nothing more to say; the room was so silent that the dining-room door opened a furtive crack—then closed quickly! Mrs. Houghton began to talk about Maurice's journey, and Maurice asked whether Eleanor could be taken home the next day—at which the dining-room door opened broadly, and Mrs. Newbolt said:
"If you ask me, I'd say 'no'! If you want to know what I think, I think she's got a temperature! And she oughtn't to stir out of this house till it's normal."