"Hullo, Marcia! Beastly business, this you've been getting into. Think, my dear, you'd have done much better to keep out of it--especially as you and Newbury didn't agree. I've just seen Coryston in the park--he confessed he'd set you on--and that you and Newbury had quarreled over it. _He's_ perfectly mad about it, of course. That you might expect. I say--mother is late!" He looked round the hall imperiously. Marcia, supporting herself on a chair, met his eyes, and made no reply. Yet she dimly remembered that her mother had asked her to give him some message. "Arthur, remember that your sister's had a great shock!" said Sir Wilfrid, sternly. "I know that! Sorry for you, Marcia--awfully--but I expect you'll have to appear at the inquest--don't see how you can get out of it. You should have thought twice about going there--when Newbury didn't want you to. And what's this they say about a letter?" His tone had the peremptory ring natural to many young men of his stamp, in dealing with their inferiors, or--until love has tamed them--with women; but it came strangely from the good-tempered and easy-going Arthur. Marcia's hand closed instinctively on the bosom of her dress, where the letter was. "Mrs. Betts wrote me a letter," she said, slowly. "You'd better let me see it. Sir Wilfrid and I can advise you." He held out an authoritative hand. Marcia made no movement, and the hand dropped. "Oh, well, if you're going to take no one's advice but your own, I suppose you must gang your own gait!" said her brother, impatiently. "But if you're a sensible girl you'll make it up with Newbury and let him keep you out of it as much as possible. Betts was always a cranky fellow. I'm sorry for the little woman, though." And walking away to a distant window at the far end of the hall, whence all the front approaches to the house could be seen, he stood drumming on the glass and fixedly looking out. Sir Wilfrid, with an angry ejaculation, approached Marcia. "My dear, your brother isn't himself!--else he could never have spoken so unkindly. Will you show me that letter? It will, of course, have to go to the police." She held it out to him obediently. Sir Wilfrid read it. He blew his nose, and walked away for a minute. When he returned, it was to say, with lips that twitched a little in his smooth-shaven actor's face: "Most touching! If one could only have known! But dear Marcia, I hope it's not true--I hope to God, it's not true!--that you've quarreled with Newbury?" Marcia was standing with her head thrown back against the high marble mantelpiece. The lids drooped over her eyes. "I don't know," she said, in a faint voice. "I don't know. Oh no, not _quarreled_--" Sir Wilfrid looked at her with a fatherly concern; took her limp hand and pressed it. "Stand by him, dear, stand by him! He'll suffer enough from this--without losing you."