She had changed from a girl into a woman; yet I did not divine in her anything like the development I had marked in Nina Frost. In appearance, air, and manner she was the Lucinda whom I had known at Cragsfoot; her eyes still remotely pondering, looking inwards as well as outwards, the contour of her face unchanged, her skin with all its soft beauty. But she was thinner, and looked rather tired. “Arsenio told me that you saw me in the taxi that day,” she said suddenly. “He must have been very much amused, wasn’t he? He certainly made a pretty fool of me! And put the cap on it by coming to the—to the church, didn’t he?” “I suppose, when once he’d met you, he was bound to go there, or you’d have suspected.” “He could have made some excuse to leave me, and not turned up again.” She did not pursue her little effort to defend Valdez; she let it go with a curious smile, half-amused, half-apologetic. I smiled back. “Monkey Valdez, I think!” said I. She would not answer that, but her smile persisted. “You were looking very happy and bonny,” I added. “I was happy that day. I had at last done right.” “The deuce you had!” That was to myself. To her I said, rather dryly, “It certainly was at the last, Lucinda.” “It was as soon as I knew—as soon as I really knew.” The waiter brought coffee. She took a cigarette from me, and we both began to smoke. “And it’s true that I didn’t dare to face Waldo. I was physically afraid. He’d have struck me.” “Never!” I exclaimed, indignant at the aspersion on my kinsman. “Oh, but yes!—I thought that he would fight Arsenio that night at Cragsfoot—the night Arsenio first kissed me.” She let her cigarette drop to the ground, and leant back in her chair. Her eyes were on mine, but the shadow of the veil was thick. “It all began then—at least, I realized the beginning of it. It all began then, and it never stopped till that day when I ran away. Shall I tell you about it?” “We were all very fond of you—all of us. I wish you would.” She laid her hand on my arm for a moment. “I couldn’t have told then—perhaps I can now. But, dear Julius, perhaps not quite plainly. There’s shame in it. Some, I think, for all of us—most, I suppose, for me.” At this point a vision of Aunt Bertha’s “nice woman” flitted before my mind’s eye; it was a moment for her ministrations—or ought to have been, perhaps. Lucinda was rather ruminative than distressed.