"It was a very gentle, quiet snore," said Margaret politely. Mrs. Danvers broke into a soft, chuckling laugh which was as pleasant and amiable as her voice, and Martin having now turned on the light Margaret saw that her hostess's face and appearance matched her voice and laugh. She was a stout, not to say exceedingly stout, middle-aged woman, with a round, rosy face, on every line of which good-temper, combined with an easy, indolent disposition, were expressed. "Excuse my getting up, my dear," she said, "but truth to say, I do not get up as easily as I could wish. 'J'y suis, j'y reste,' ought to be, though it is not, my family motto. And so you missed your train. Very trying to miss trains, is it not? And you must be tired, my dear. I hope Maud saw that you had enough to eat, and that you like your room." "Miss Carson has only this minute arrived, Madam," interposed Martin from the door. "And Miss Maud directed me to take her straight to you." "And you have had nothing to eat since you arrived!" Mrs. Danvers exclaimed in a horrified tone. "Why, my dear, you must be starving! Come with me to the dining-room at once." She got slowly up out of her capacious chair as she spoke, and as she did so a piece of knitting slid from her lap to the floor, while a big ball of worsted rolled away under the nearest sofa. Margaret first picked up the knitting and then pursued the ball and restored both to their owner, an action which, although she did not know it at the time, she was destined to perform very often for Mrs. Danvers, for that lady was very rarely unaccompanied by a piece of knitting, which she invariably dropped when she rose; to knit, she said, soothed the nerves, and gave an added pleasure to conversation. Reading she was not fond of, and scarcely ever opened a book or a newspaper, but she would knit and talk, chiefly about her children, for hours at a stretch. When her knitting had been restored to her now, and half a row of stitches dropped in the fall picked up, she led the way into the dining-room. She was kindness and hospitality itself, but though her incessant flow of talk obviated all necessity for Margaret to contribute more than the merest monosyllables, the strain of listening and being ready to say Yes or No in the right places fatigued Margaret so greatly that by the end of the meal her brain was in a whirl, and if Mrs. Danvers had put to her one-tenth of the questions to which Eleanor had supplied ready-made answers, her replies would have been so extraordinarily muddled up that the deception the two girls were practising would have been found out at once. But Mrs. Danvers, like her daughter Maud, was far more interested in her own concerns than in those of any one with whom she might come in contact.