Miss Dobell became rather flustered. “I have a little errand,” she said hurriedly. “A little errand, my dear Elizabeth. I will not keep you, oh, no, I must not keep you now. I shall see you later, I shall come and see you, but I will not detain you now. Oh, no, Mary will be waiting for you.” “So you have really come,” said Mary a little later. After kissing her sister warmly, she had allowed a slight air of offence to appear. “I had begun to think you had missed your train. I am afraid the tea will be rather strong, I had it made punctually, you see. I was beginning to think that you hadn’t been able to tear yourself away from Agneta after all.” “Now, Molly—” said Elizabeth, protestingly. But Mary was not to be turned aside. “Of course you would much rather have stayed, I know that. Will you have bread and butter or tea-cake? When Mr. Mottisfont died, I said to myself, ‘Now she’ll go and live with Agneta, and she might just as well be _dead_.’ That’s why I was quite pleased when Edward came and told me that Mr. Mottisfont had said you were to stay on here for a year. Of course, as I said to Edward, he had no right to make any such condition, and if it had been any one but you, I shouldn’t have liked it at all. That’s what I said to Edward—‘It really isn’t fair, but Elizabeth isn’t like other people. She won’t try and run the house over my head, and she won’t want to be always with us.’ You see, married people do like to have their evenings, but as I said to Edward, ‘Elizabeth would much rather be in her own little room, with a book, than sitting with us.’ And you would, wouldn’t you?” “Oh, yes,” said Elizabeth laughing. The spectacle of Mary being tactful always made her laugh. “Of course when any one comes in in the evening—that’s different. Of course you’ll join us then. But you’d rather be here as a rule, wouldn’t you?” “Oh, you know I love my little room. It was nice of you to have tea here, Molly,” said Elizabeth. “Yes, I thought you’d like it. And then I wanted the rest of the house to be a surprise to you. When we’ve had tea I want to show you everything. Of course your rooms haven’t been touched, you said you’d rather they weren’t; but everything else has been done up, and I really think it’s very nice. I’ve been quite excited over it.” “Give me a little more tea, Molly,” said Elizabeth. As she leaned forward with her cup in her hand, she asked casually: “Have you seen much of David lately?” “Oh, yes,” said Mary, “he’s here very often.” She pursed her lips a little. “I think David is a _very_ curious person, Liz. I don’t understand him at all. I think he is very difficult to understand.” “Is he, Molly?” Elizabeth looked at her sister with something between anxiety and amusement.