'No,' said Frances, 'it was only yesterday. We went a long walk in the afternoon, and of course we didn't see you till this morning. We couldn't have told you till just now, and I thought—I think—I thought Jass was waiting to speak to you alone after breakfast.'
'It wasn't that,' said Jacinth. 'If you want to know exactly why I didn't begin about it at breakfast, Aunt Alison, it was because I had a sort of idea or fancy that you had heard already from Lady Myrtle. I thought you looked just a little annoyed, and I kept expecting you to say something about it, and then, of course, I would have told you everything there was to tell.'
Miss Alison Mildmay was severe, but she was not distrustful or suspicious, and the candour of the two girls was unmistakable.
'I am sorry,' she said, 'to have judged you unfairly. Tell me the whole story now, and then I will read you what this eccentric old lady says.'
She smiled a little.
'That was just what she said you'd call her,' broke in Frances. 'But she said her letter would make you understand.'
'Oh yes, of course it does, to a certain extent,' replied her aunt. Then her eyes fell on the envelope—'Miss Alison Mildmay.'
'Considering I have lived twenty years at Thetford,' she said, rather bitterly, 'I think it, to say the least, unnecessary to address me like this, though of course I don't deny that it is, strictly speaking, correct.'
Jacinth glanced at it.
'I am sure'—she began. 'You don't think I had anything to do with it?'