"I can't think why you've turned against her, Janet.

It's so mean as well as so unkind! She has hardly any friends in the world, and she thought by the account Godfrey gave of us that _we_ should become her friends." "It's always a woman's own fault if she has no friends, especially when she's such an attractive woman as Mrs.Crofton," said Janet shortly.

She hesitated, and then added something for which she was sorry immediately afterwards: "I happen to know rather more about Mrs.Crofton than most of the people in Beechfield do." She spoke with that touch of mysterious finality which is always so irritating to a listener who is in indifferent sympathy with a speaker.
"What d'you mean ?" cried Jack fiercely.

"I insist on your telling me what you mean!" Janet Tosswill told herself with Scotch directness that she had been a fool.

But if Jack was--she hardly knew how to put it to herself--so--so bewitched by Mrs.Crofton as he seemed to be, then perhaps, as they had got to this point, he had better hear the truth: "Mrs.Crofton made herself very much talked about in the neighbourhood of the place where she and her husband settled after the War.