"What did Doctor Undershaw say of him to-day?"
She bent forward across the tea-table, speaking earnestly.
Tatham looked at her in surprise.
"The report is better. Had you heard about it?"
"I must have seen him just before the accident—"
"Lydia! I never understood," said Mrs. Penfold rather bewildered.
Lydia explained that she too had seen Doctor Undershaw that morning, on his way to the Tower, in Whitebeck village, and he had told her the story. She was particularly interested, because of the little meeting by the river, which she described in a few words. Twenty minutes or so after her conversation with the stranger the accident must have happened.
Mrs. Penfold meanwhile was thinking, "Why didn't Lydia tell me all this on the drive?" Then she remembered one of Lydia's characteristics—a kind of passionate reticence about things that moved her. Had the fate then of the young man—whom she could only have seen for a few minutes—touched her so much?
Lady Tatham had listened attentively to Lydia's story—the inner mind of her all the time closely and critically observant of the story-teller, her beauty, the manner and quality of it, her movements, her voice. Her voice particularly. When the girl's little speech came to an end, Victoria still had the charm of it in her ears.
"Does any one know the man's name?" she inquired.