“Not, I think, for the occasion,” he replied suavely. “Was Mrs. Knyvett—she was upset, of course—but was she utterly surprised?” “What makes you ask that, Paget?” “Well, people generally show some signs of what they’re going to do. One may miss the signs at the time, but it’s usually possible to see them in retrospect, to interpret them after the event.” “You mean that you can, or I can, or the Knyvett woman can?” Aunt Bertha asked rather sharply. “Never mind me for the minute. Did it affect her—this occurrence—just as you might expect?” “Why, yes, I should say so, Paget. The poor soul was completely knocked over, flabbergasted, shocked out of her senses. But—well now, upon my word, Paget! She did put one thing rather queerly.” “Ah!” said Sir Paget. Waldo looked up with an awakened, though still sullen, animation. I was listening with a lively interest; somehow I felt sure that these two wise children of the world—what things must they not have seen between them?—would get at something. “When her note came—that note, you know—what would you have said in her place? No, I don’t mean that. You’d have said: ‘Well, I’m damned!’ But what would you have expected her to say?” “‘Great God!’ or perhaps ‘Good gracious!’” Sir Paget suggested doubtfully. “She’s gone—gone!” I ventured to submit. “Just so—just what I should have said,” Aunt Bertha agreed. “Something like that. What our friend Mrs. Knyvett did say to me was, ‘Miss Fleming, she’s done it!’” “What did you say?” Sir Paget as nearly snapped this out as a man of his urbanity could snap. “I don’t think I said anything. There seemed nothing to——” “Then you knew what she meant?” Aunt Bertha pouted her lips and looked, as it might be, apprehensively, at Sir Paget. “Yes, I suppose I must have,” she concluded—with an obvious air of genuine surprise. “We sometimes find that we have known—in a way—things that we never realized that we knew,” said Sir Paget—“much what I said before. But—well, you and Mrs. Knyvett both seem to have had somewhere in your minds the idea—the speculation—that Lucinda might possibly do what she has done. Can you tell us at all why? Because that sort of thing doesn’t generally happen.” “By God, no!” Waldo grunted out. “And I don’t see much good in all this jaw about it.” A slight, still pretty, flush showed itself on Aunt Bertha’s wrinkled cheeks—hers seemed happy wrinkles, folds that smiles had turned, not furrows plowed by sorrow—“I’ve never been married,” she said, “and I was only once in love. He was killed in the Zulu war—when you were no more than a boy, Paget. So perhaps I’m no judge. But—darling Waldo, can you forgive me? She’s never of late looked like—like a girl waiting for her lover. That’s all I’ve got to go upon, Paget, absolutely all.” I saw Waldo’s hands clench; he sat where he was, but seemed to do it with an effort. “And Mrs. Knyvett?”