Almost as if the words were dragged out of her, Miss Cheale added: “He asked me about the Thatched Farm—how you all were, and so on. But I told him I did not know.”
After Lucy had fetched Miss Prince’s warm bedroom slippers, she asked the visitor: “Won’t you come into the little sitting room? I’ve kept up a good fire there. Miss Prince will be back in a minute.”
But it seemed a very long time both to the young lady sitting in the parlour and to the maid sitting in the kitchen, before there came the familiar knock at the front door. Miss Prince would have thought it quite wrong, almost a “fast” thing to do, to let herself in with a latchkey.
As Lucy opened the door she whispered: “Miss Cheale is here, waiting to see you, ma’am.”
“Miss Cheale!”
Miss Prince could hardly believe her ears. She had supposed her friend to be ill in bed, in London.
As she came in to her sitting room, Agatha Cheale stood up, a look of agonized suspense on her face.
“Is Harry Garlett committed for trial?” she asked.
“Of course he is—surely you did not expect anything else?”
And then Miss Prince felt suddenly disturbed and angry. She disliked intensely anything that savoured of hysterical emotion, and here was Agatha Cheale clasping her hands together with a wild gesture, and exclaiming: “How terrible! For he is innocent—innocent!”