Lord Pinkerton said, 'This is very painful, my dears; very painful indeed. Jane, my dear …'
He meant that Jane was to go away, because it was even more painful for her than for the others. But Jane didn't go. It wasn't painful for Jane really. She felt hard and cold, and as if nothing mattered. She was angry with Clare for crying instead of explaining what had happened.
Lady Pinkerton said, passing her hand over her forehead in the tired way she had and shutting her eyes, 'My dear, you are over-wrought. You don't know what you are saying. You will be able to tell us more clearly in the morning.'
But Clare said they must believe her now, and Lord Pinkerton must telephone up to the Haste and have the stuff about the Hobart Mystery stopped.
'My poor child,' said Lady Pinkerton, 'what has made you suddenly, so long after, tell us this terrible story?'
Clare sobbed that she hadn't been able to bear it on her mind any more, and also that she hadn't known till lately that Gideon was suspected.
Lord and Lady Pinkerton looked at each other, wondering what to believe, then at Jane, wishing she was gone, so that they could ask Clare more about it. Jane said, 'Don't mind me. I don't mind hearing about it.' Jane meant to stay. She thought that if she was gone they would persuade Clare she had dreamed it all and that it had been really Gideon after all.
Jane asked Clare why she had pushed Oliver, thinking that she ought to explain, and not cry. But still Clare only cried, and at last said she couldn't ever tell any one. Lady Pinkerton turned pink, and Lord Pinkerton walked up and down and said, 'Tut tut,' and it was more obvious than ever what Clare meant.
She added, 'But I never meant, indeed I never meant, to hurt him. He just fell back, and …'
'Was killed,' Jane finished for her. Jane thought Clare was like their mother in trying to avoid plain words for disagreeable things.