"No!" I shrieked. "Keep him! I must go back, instantly...." And through my own strange-sounding voice, hers reached me. "You must see that you are quite unintelligible. Sit down and collect yourself." "Sit down! Isn't it enough that _one_ woman sits still, while--while----" She was putting questions. I heard a reproach that seemed to fill the house: "You never came to meet us!" And while the charge was ringing I felt, with anguish, the injustice of it. How could one have expected this woman to come! But she should be moved and stirred at last! "I sent my maid," she was defending herself, "--only a minute or two late." "The other woman was not late!" "Who?" I begged the butler to get a cloak for Mrs. Harborough. She was saying Bettina and I should have waited. And again that I must calm myself and tell her---- "Someone pretended to be you!" I hurled it at her. "She took us to a house--a place where they do worse than murder. Betty is there now----" I told her all I could pack into a few sentences. "It isn't possible," my aunt said. "This is England." "_Come and see!_ Betty----" But they only thought me mad; they tortured me with questions. I caught her by the arm. "God won't forgive you if you wait an instant more." Oh, but she was old and unbelieving! So old, I felt she had looked on unmoved at evil since the world began. But she was sending for wraps, sending messages. Still she sat there, in the heavy, square-backed chair, her hands upon her knees, her two feet side by side as motionless as the footstool, her heavy shoulders high and square, her lace cap with square ends falling either side her face, like the head-dress of an Egyptian, her air of monumental calm more like a Theban statue than a living woman. I turned away. The figure in the chair rose up at last. Oh, but slowly--slow, and stiff, and ponderous. I felt in her all the heaviness of the acquiescent since Time began. "That is right," she said to the old man who had brought the maid. And the maid was old, too. Three helpless ghosts. Like death the sense came over me that I was as badly off with these three, as I had been alone. Again I turned from them, frantic. "I will go out," I cried, "and find help." I ran towards the door. It was then the old man made the first sane suggestion. We could telephone to the police. That would save time! The police would meet us outside Betty's prison. I followed the butler into the hall. We all stood there, by the telephone. Ages seemed to go by while he was getting the number. And when he had got the number, he could not hear the questions that were put. I tore the receiver out of his hand--I pushed him aside. But I had never used the telephone before, and I spoke too loudly. When they told me so, I sobbed. The voice at the other end was faint and cool. Oh, the easy way the world was taking Betty's fate! And then the faint cool voice at the other end said something which showed me I was not believed.