“In the end,” says Sallie, “she’ll get on better with cousin Claire than anybody. Far better than any really thoroughly truthful person could ever do.” It is all, in a way, very like the old literary convention of the good people getting married and living happily ever after and the bad ones coming to smash. And yet there is another way of looking at it--Mary Ambrey’s way. It was after Martyn and Sallie had gone away, after Christopher’s marriage, and after I had been abroad with Claire for nearly nine weeks. Mary had remained in Cross Loman. It was a very warm spring day, and I had driven her up Loman Hill to the crossroads. The pony stopped of his own accord and turned round, and we looked at the distant hills and the red church tower. It was then that Mary told me she could never come there any more without thinking, with a vividness of thought that amounted to pain, of Mrs. Harter and of Captain Patch. “Neither can I,” said I. “The first--no, it was the second--walk that they took together was to this place.” “Yes. How do you know?” “She told me.” “Diamond Harter?” “Yes,” said Mary. “I didn’t know that she had ever told anybody anything.” “It was the only time that she ever did, I think, and nobody else knows that--I went down to Queen Street the day of the inquest.” “Did you, Mary?” “I wasn’t the only one,” she said quickly. “After the accident, do you remember that they’d taken her to the cottage hospital and she was detained there till the very day of the inquest? Two or three other people asked for her then, I know--the Rector, and Nancy Fazackerly, and, I think, Mrs. Leeds.” I ejaculated at the last name. “Yes, I know,” said Mary. “Of course that was horrible--but she refused to see the Rector, too, and Nancy.” “So I should have expected.” “I don’t know. The Rector is very gentle, and she’s known him for years--and he was very fond of Bill Patch. But, anyhow, she didn’t see either of them. As far as I know, she saw nobody except the doctor and one nurse until she gave her evidence. And after that, Miles, she had to go back to Queen Street.” “And you went to find her there?”