Mrs. Dysart had seen her there. She was now staying with her niece, Julia Nethersole, and desired to see him. She was sure that he would want to hear about their friend. He remembered Mrs. Dysart as a small, robust, iron-gray woman--sharp-tongued, warm-hearted, terrifically observant. Though childless, she had always struck him as almost savagely maternal. He dreaded the interview, for he had had some vague idea that she had not appreciated Freda. Besides, his connection with Miss Farrar was so public that Mrs. Dysart would have no delicacy in approaching it. Mrs. Dysart proved more reticent than he had feared. The full flow of her reminiscences began only under pressure. The news of Miss Farrar's death, she said, came to her as a shock, but hardly as a surprise. "You were not with her, then?" he said. "No one was with her." The words dropped into a terrible silence. A sound broke it, the sound of some uneasy movement made by Julia. "When did you see her last?" he asked. "I saw her last driving on the sea front at San Remo. If you could call it seeing her. She was all huddled up in furs and rugs and things. Just a sharp white slip of a face and two eyes gazing at nothing out of the carriage window. She looked as if something had scared her." And it was of her that he had been afraid! "Do you know," he said presently, "what she died of?" "No. It was supposed that, some time or other, she must have had some great shock." Caldecott shifted his position. "The doctors said there was no reason why she should have died. She could have lived well enough if she had wanted to. The terrible thing was that she didn't want. If you ask me what she died of I should say she was either scared to death or starved." "Surely," he said, "surely she had enough?" "Oh, she had food enough to eat, and clothes enough to cover her, and fire enough to warm her. But she starved." "What do you suppose," said Julia, "the poor girl wanted?" "Nothing, my dear, that you would understand." He was at a loss to account for the asperity of the little lady's tone; but he remembered that Julia had never been a favorite with her aunt. "I'm convinced," said Mrs. Dysart, "that woman died for want of something. Something that she'd got used to till it was absolutely necessary to her. Something, whatever it was, that had completely satisfied her. When she found herself without it, _that_, I imagine, constituted the shock. And she wasn't strong enough to stand it, that was all." Mrs. Dysart spoke to her niece, but he felt that there was something in her, fiery and indignant, that hurled itself across Julia at him. He changed the subject. "She--she left nothing?" "Not a note, not a line." "Ah, well, what we have is beautiful enough for anybody." "I wonder if you have any idea what you might have had? If you even knew what it was you had?" "I never presumed," he said, "to understand her. I've hardly ever known any woman properly but one."