"Yes, I—" he hesitated, looking straight at her in silence. And after a while a slight colour not due to the heat deepened the florid hue of her features.
"I knew Sir Charles's father," she said in a voice so modulated—a voice so unexpected and almost pretty, that he could scarcely believe it was she who had spoken.
"You said," she went on under her breath, "that in all my life friendship has never inspired in me a kindly action. You are wrong, Rix. In the matter of this marriage my only inspiration is friendship—the friendship I had for a man who is dead.... Sir Charles is his only son."
Quarren looked at her in silence.
"I was young once, Ricky. I suppose you can scarcely believe that. Life and youth began early for me—and lasted a little more than a year—and then they both burnt out in my heart—leaving the rest of me alive—this dross!—" She touched herself on her bosom, then lowered her eyes, and sat thinking for a while.
Daisy walked into the room and seated herself in a bar of sunlight, pleasantly blinking her yellow eyes. Mrs. Sprowl glanced at her absently, and they eyed each other in silence.
Then the larger of the pair drew a thick, uneasy breath, looked up at Quarren, all the cunning and hardness gone from her heavy features.
"I've only been trying to do for a dead man's son what might have pleased that man were he alive," she said. "Sir Charles was a little lad when he died. But he left a letter for him to read when he was grown up. I never saw the letter, but Sir Charles has told me that, in it, his father spoke—amiably—of me and said that in me his son would always find a friend.... That is all, Rix. Do you believe me?"
"Yes."
"Then—should I go to Witch-Hollow?"