Down to dinner under the threat of the revolver. She was intolerant now of the smallest resistance. She got them sitting there in the same travesty, forced them to eat, forced them to entertain her with their conversation. “No glum faces!” she said sharply. It was hard enough to look glum under those additions to nature; Bertie’s nose especially had a convivial air, it imposed upon him a gross jollity he was very far from feeling. They ate turkey and plum-pudding, unwillingly, choking back, according to their natures, their fury or their tears. Lydia had not stinted their fare; but then, she had never been niggardly. There was a lavishness in her providing; there were raisins, almonds, brandy; and she urged the appetites of her guests with an ironical though genuine hospitality. “Christmas dinner, you know,” she said to them as she heaped the food upon their plates. They protested; she nearly laughed at the piteous protest in their eyes shining out through their ridiculous trappings. But she remembered the forty years, and the laughter died unborn. Forty years—and she had got them to herself. She would let them off nothing. XIV After dinner they huddled all four together in the same room. They could not lock themselves in, because Lydia had removed all the keys. They whispered together a good deal, running up and down the scale from apathy to indignation. They had even moments of curiosity, when they ferreted among the hotch-potch of things they found stuffed away in the cupboards and drawers, and under the bed; and speculated marvelling on the queerness of Alice’s existence among these things: forty years of masquerade! But for the most part they sat gloomy, or wandered aimlessly about the room, dwelling in their own minds upon their several apprehensions. Bertie’s wife said, “It’s all so vague—only hints, so to speak,” and a background of shadows leapt into being. Steps prowled past in the passage; they prowled up and down. The four in the room looked at one another. There was a faint cry outside, and a laugh. “Two people, or one?” they whispered. There was no telling how many people the house might conceal. The resources of the shop alone could transform Lydia into a hundred different characters. She would change her personality with each one. They could not contemplate this idea. It credited her with uncanny powers. Their imaginations, which had never in their lives been set to work before, now gaped, pits full of possibilities. They peeped and were afraid.