I began to wish that I had not been quite so friendly with Mr. Banks. I had been led away by the scent and glamour of the night. Here, in this Sunday morning breakfast-room, I was able for the first time to appreciate the tragedy in its proper relation to the facts of life. I saw that Brenda's rash impulsiveness might impose a quite horrible punishment on her too-devoted father. I turned away towards one of the window-seats. Miss Tattersall and Nora Bailey were sitting together there, pretending a conversation while they patiently awaited the coming of breakfast. Mrs. Jervaise was talking now to her elder daughter; Frank was arguing some point with Gordon Hughes, and as I felt unequal to offering comfort to the lonely head of the house, so evidently wrapped in his sorrow, I preferred to range myself with the fourth group. I thought it probable that the sympathies of those two young women might at the moment most nearly correspond to my own. I was surprised to be greeted by Miss Tattersall with what had all the appearance of a discreetly covert wink, and I raised my eyebrows with that air of half-jocular inquiry which I fancied she would expect from me. She evaded the implied question, however, by asking me what time I "really got to bed, after all." "The sun was up before I went to sleep," I replied, to avoid the possible embarrassment of her comments should I admit to having slept in the open air; and then John and a female acolyte came in with the long-desired material of breakfast. "Good!" I commented softly. "I'm simply ravenous." "Are you?" Miss Tattersall said. "You deserve to go without breakfast for having missed prayers," and added in precisely the same undertone of conventional commonplace, "I don't believe she came back at all last night." But, having thus piqued my curiosity, she gave me no opportunity to gratify it. She checked the question that my change of expression must have foreshadowed by a frown which warned me that she could not give any reason for her suspicion in that company. "Later on," she whispered, and got up from her seat in the window, leaving me to puzzle over the still uncertain mystery of Brenda's disappearance. Miss Bailey had not, apparently, overheard the confidence. She did not, in any case, relinquish for an instant that air of simple, attentive innocence which so admirably suited the fresh prettiness of her style. There was little conversation over the breakfast table. We were all glad to find an excuse for silence either in the pretence or reality of hunger. Old Jervaise's excuse was, quite pathetically, only a pretence; but he tried very hard to appear engrossed in the making of a hearty meal. His manner had begun to fascinate me, and I had constantly to check myself from staring at him. I found it so difficult to account satisfactorily for the effect of dread that he in some way conveyed. It was, I thought, much the effect that might have been produced by a criminal in danger of arrest.