“I ... don’t ... know.”
“But I don’t believe she saw him. I don’t believe she saw anything or knew why she was frightened. She just got a start ... a shock—began to run without knowing why, and ran herself into a blind panic. She looked quite idiotic when I was questioning her.”
“Oh,” thought Jane. “It’s horrible to listen at doors, but what am I to do?”
What she did was to go on listening. She heard Lady Heritage’s rare laugh.
“Then this afternoon—my dear Jeffrey, it would have convinced you or any one. The friend—this Daphne Todhunter—well, only a fool could have made a bosom friend of her, and, as I told you, even she had the lowest opinion of her adored Renata’s brains.”
“I don’t know,” said Ember again. “You say she’s a fool, I say she’s a fool, her friend says she’s a fool, but something, some instinct in me protests.”
“Womanly intuition,” said Lady Heritage, with a mocking note.
There was silence; then:
“These girls—were they alone together?”
“No. They conducted what appeared to be a curiously emotional conversation at the other end of Mrs. Cottingham’s dreadful drawing-room, which always reminds me of a parish jumble sale.”