For a long moment she stared at her without change of expression, her brain insisting, as it had done of the cottage, that it did not know her. She belonged to her own section of this unending day, which was neither the far-off section that contained the House of Dreams, nor this present section which was wholly Tibbie’s. But each time they had met the charwoman had been conscious of something that seemed to call to her for defence; and presently, raising her head further, she succeeded in bracing her tired mind. Emma had been standing as still as a stone when she first saw her, as if intent upon producing that apparition-like effect which seemed to be one of her pet vanities. Now, however, she came quietly forward and stood by the table, a roundabout figure with folded arms. “This here’s ter’ble bad news, Ann Clapham,” she began, in her smooth tones, her round little black eyes searching the charwoman’s ravaged face. “Ay....” Mrs. Clapham’s throat almost refused speech, while at the back of her mind was growing a dull wonder at the appearance of Emma in another’s cottage. “Ter’ble bad news it is an’ all.... I don’t know as I’ve ever been so upset.” “Ay.” “I heard tell of it from Mrs. James—yon stuck-up piece from over the road. I see her running with a rubber bottle, and handing it in here.... Eh, but I should think I cried for t’ best part of an hour!” Captured in spite of herself by this unexpected remark, Mrs. Clapham lifted her glance to the hard little face. Emma’s eyes were certainly bright, and her cheeks flushed, but she hardly looked as if she had been giving way to turbulent grief. “Of course, you might say it was a deal worse for me when my poor lad was killed in France, but there was things to make up for it, all the same. There was glory, and folks taking off their hats, and all suchlike, as his lordship said. But there isn’t anything cheering o’ that sort when folks die same as Stephen’s wife.” The thing that Mrs. Clapham had heard crying vaguely for help aroused her now with a sharp tug. That claim upon Tibbie, which had frightened her earlier on, hurried her now into active offence. “I’ll thank you not to go calling my lass ‘Stephen’s wife’ to-night!” she burst out, so sharply and fluently that Emma actually jumped. Mrs. Clapham had raised herself even further, and a faint ring had come back to her dull voice. “She married your Stephen right enough, and right fond she was of him, too. But she isn’t your Stephen’s wife, nor his widow, neither, to-night. She’s just my Tibbie and nowt else!” Emma’s flush deepened, and one of her hands dropped from her waist to rest on the table; but before she could answer, Mrs. Clapham had raced on.