“I can tell you what’s the matter. I upset her last night. It was nearly twelve when I got home from my walk with Mrs. Carpenter. Ruthie’d got herself all worked up. Thought we’d been getting drowned again or something, didn’t you, Ruthie? It was too bad of me to keep her sitting up so late.” A heavy silence fell. Ruthita dropped her eyes, trying to recover her composure. My grandmother’s face masked itself in a non-committal stare. She gazed past me out of the window, and seemed to hold her breath; only the faint tinkling of the gold chain against the jet of her bodice, told how her breath came and went. She had placed her hand on the coffee-pot as I began to speak. When I ended, it stayed there motionless. From the bake-house across the courtyard came the bump, bang, bump of the bakers pounding the dough into bread. “So you stayed out with Mrs. Carpenter till nearly twelve?” My grandmother never used dialect when she wished to be impressive. Her tones were icily refined and haughty-- I recognized them as belonging to her company manners. She could be crushingly aloof and dignified when her sense of the moralities was offended. She had practised her talent for “settin’ folks down and makin’ ’em feel like three penn’orth o’ happence” to some purpose on grizzled sea-captains. “Yes, till nearly twelve. It was pretty late, wasn’t it? We met some interesting people camping on the marshlands--old friends of mine and Ruthita’s.” “Indeed! And you walked back from the Broads about midnight with a married woman.” “Oh, no. It wasn’t much after ten when we started back. Time passed quickly; we didn’t realize how late it was getting. It didn’t matter, except for Ruthita. It was bright moonlight. The country looked perfect.” “It must ha’ done,” said my grandmother sarcastically. “It did. Some day we must try it all together.” “And who were your interesting friends? Respectable people, no doubt, to be camping on the marshlands.” “They weren’t respectable. They were gipsies.” Then, turning to Ruthita, “It was Lilith that we met. You remember Lilith of Epping Forest--that time we ran away to get married. Fancy meeting her after all these years! And just as I left, I saw G’liath drive up. I could swear it was the same old caravan, Ruthie.” Curiosity and love of romance melted my grandmother’s reserve. “G’liath! Why, that’s the gipsy family to which Sir Charles’s mother belonged. They must be kind o’ relatives o’ yours.” “I suppose they must. I never thought of that. I’ll have to ask Lilith about it. They were on their way to Yarminster Fair. We’ll run over and see them.” Just then the errand boy, who was minding the shop, tapped at the keeping-room door and handed in a note for me. I saw that it was unstamped and addressed in a handwriting that I did not recognize. “Where did this come from?” “It war left jist nar acrost the counter by a sarvant-gal.” “All right.”