Lady Pole looked up at her husband. Her expression at that moment was curious. There was sadness in it and pity too and, oddly enough, a little amusement. It was as if she were saying to herself, “Look at us! What a sad pair we make!” Aloud she said, “I am only as tired as I usually am. I must have walked for miles and miles last night. And danced for hours too!”

“Then you must rest,” he insisted. “Let me take you upstairs to Pampisford and she will take care of you.”

At first her ladyship seemed inclined to resist him. She seized Arabella’s hand and held it, as if to shew him that she would not consent to be parted from her. But then just as suddenly she gave it up and allowed him to lead her away.

At the door she turned. “Goodbye, Mrs Strange. I hope they will let you come again. I hope you will do me that honour. I see no one. Or rather, I see whole roomfuls of people, but not a Christian among them.”

Arabella stepped forward, intending to shake Lady Pole’s hand and to assure her that she would gladly come again, but Sir Walter had already removed her ladyship from the room. For the second time that day Arabella was left alone in the house in Harley-street.

A bell began to toll.

Naturally she was a little surprized after all that Sir Walter had said about the bells of Mary-le-bone standing silent out of deference to Lady Pole’s illness. This bell sounded very sad and far-away and it brought before her imagination all sorts of melancholy scenes …

… bleak, wind-swept fens and moors; empty fields with broken walls and gates hanging off their hinges; a black, ruined church; an open grave; a suicide buried at a lonely crossroads; a fire of bones blazing in the twilit snow; a gallows with a man swinging from its arm; another man crucified upon a wheel; an ancient spear plunged into the mud with a strange talisman, like a little leather finger, hanging from it; a scarecrow whose black rags blew about so violently in the wind that he seemed about to leap into the grey air and fly towards you on vast black wings …

“I must beg your pardon if you have seen any thing here to disturb you,” said Sir Walter, coming suddenly back into the room.

Arabella caught hold of a chair to steady herself.

“Mrs Strange? You are not well.” He took hold of her arm and helped her sit down. “May I fetch someone? Your husband? Her ladyship’s maid?”

“No, no,” said Arabella, a little out of breath. “I want no one, nothing. I thought … I did not know you were here. That is all.”

Sir Walter stared at her in great concern. She tried to smile at him, but she was not quite sure that the smile turned out well.