It was time to interfere. I called out: "Betty, let us get back. I'll fix the man up with everything he wants." At the moment of her turning to me a telegraph boy hopped from his bicycle on the off-side of the ear and touched his cap. "I've a telegram for Mrs. Connor, sir. I recognised the car and I think that's the lady. So instead of going on to the house--" I cut him short. Yes. That was Mrs. Connor of Telford Lodge. He dodged round the car and, entering the garden path, handed the orange-coloured envelope to Betty. She took it from him absent-mindedly, her heart and soul engaged in the battle with Mrs. Tufton. The boy stood patient for a second or two. "Any answer, ma'am?" She turned so that I could see her face in profile, and impatiently opened the envelope and glanced at the message. Then she stiffened, seeming in a curious way to become many inches taller, and grew deadly white. The paper dropped from her hand. Marigold picked it up. The diversion of the telegraph boy had checked Mrs. Tufton's eloquence and compelled the idle interest of the neighbours. I cried out from the car: "What's the matter?" But I don't think Betty heard me. She recovered herself, took the telegram from Marigold, and showed it to the woman. "Read it," said Betty, in a strange, hard voice. "This is to tell me that my husband was killed yesterday in France. Go on your knees and thank God that you have a brave husband still alive and pray that you may be worthy of him." She went into the house and in a moment reappeared like a ghost of steel, carrying the disputed canvas kit-bag over her shoulder. The woman stared open-mouthed and said nothing. Marigold came forward to relieve Betty of her burden, but she waved him imperiously away, passed him and, opening the car-door, threw the bag at my feet. Not one of the rough crowd moved a foot or uttered a sound, save a baby in arms two doors off, who cut the silence with a sickly wail and was immediately hushed by its mother. Betty turned to the attendant Marigold. "You can drive me home." She sat by my side. Marigold took the wheel in front and drove on. She sought for my hand, held it in an iron grip, and said not a word. It was but a five minutes' run at the pace to which Marigold, time-worn master of crises of life and death, put the car. Betty held herself rigid, staring straight in front of her, and striving in vain to stifle horrible little sounds that would break through her tightly closed lips. When we pulled up at her door she said queerly: "Forgive me. I'm a damned little coward." And she bolted from the car into the house. CHAPTER XIII