On the other hand it was quite possible that the husband and wife had concocted the letter between them.
Having addressed the envelope, she suddenly got up and ran up to her bedroom.

There she opened her dressing-table drawer.

Quite at the back lay an envelope containing four L5 notes.

She took one of the notes, and running down again, slipped it in the envelope and added a postscript to her letter:-- Mrs.Crofton sends L5, which she hopes will be of use while Piper is out of a situation.
She went downstairs, giving her letter, on her way back to the drawing-room, to the cook to take out to the post-box.
As she opened the drawing room door, something which struck her as a little odd happened.

Her two visitors, the murmur of whose voices she had heard in deep, eager converse while she was stepping across her hall, abruptly stopped talking, and she wondered uneasily what they could have been saying that neither wished her to hear.
As a matter of fact that sudden silence was owing to a kindly, old-fashioned, wholly "ladylike" instinct, on the part of the two older women.