She lay on her back, her face white like a piece of paper, her dark eyes staring at the ceiling, her awful immobility broken by sudden shivering fits with a loud chattering of teeth in the shadowy silence of the room, the blinds pulled down, Mrs.
Fyne sitting by patiently, her arms folded, yet inwardly moved by the riddle of that distress of which she could not guess the word, and saying to herself: "That child is too emotional--much too emotional to be ever really sound!" As if anyone not made of stone could be perfectly sound in this world.

And then how sound?
In what sense--to resist what?
Force or corruption?
And even in the best armour of steel there are joints a treacherous stroke can always find if chance gives the opportunity.
General considerations never had the power to trouble Mrs.Fyne much.

The girl not being in a state to be questioned she waited by the bedside.
Fyne had crossed over to the house, his scruples overcome by his anxiety to discover what really had happened.

He did not have to lift the knocker; the door stood open on the inside gloom of the hall; he walked into it and saw no one about, the servants having assembled for a fatuous consultation in the basement.

Fyne's uplifted bass voice startled them down there, the butler coming up, staring and in his shirt sleeves, very suspicious at first, and then, on Fyne's explanation that he was the husband of a lady who had called several times at the house--Miss de Barral's mother's friend--becoming humanely concerned and communicative, in a man to man tone, but preserving his trained high-class servant's voice: "Oh bless you, sir, no! She does not mean to come back.