"I wish to God we had never seen her or heard of her." And then the good, heart-wrung little man, who had been beating about the bush for half an hour, came straight to the point.
"You remember Althea's visit to Scotland in January last year ?" "Perfectly," said I.
He rose from his chair and looked at me in wrinkled anguish.
"She never went there," he said.
That was what he had come to tell me.

A natural reference to the last visit of Althea to her aunt had established the stupefying fact.
"Althea's last visit was in October, 1913," said Miss Beccles.
"But we have letters from your house to prove she was with you in January," said Sir Anthony.
Most methodical and correspondence-docketing of men, he went to his library and returned with a couple of letters.
The old lady looked them through grimly.
"Pretty vague.

No details.

Read 'em again, Anthony." When he had done so, she said: "Well ?" Lady Fenimore objected: "But Althea did stay with you.

She must have stayed with you." "All right, Edith," said Maria, sitting bolt upright.