“You must be chilled to the bone!” declared Mrs Ayrton, taking one of Arabella’s hands. “Oh, my dear! You are as cold as the grave!”

Another lady ran and fetched one of Arabella’s shawls from the drawing-room. She returned carrying a blue Indian cashmere with a delicate border of gold and pink threads, but when Mrs Ayrton wrapped it around her, the black gown seemed to extinguish all its prettiness.

Arabella, with her hands folded in front of her, looked at them all with a calm, indifferent expression upon her face. She did not trouble to answer any of their kind inquiries. She seemed neither surprized nor embarrassed to find them there.

“Where in the world have you been?” demanded Strange.

“Walking,” she said. Her voice was just as it had always been.

“Walking! Arabella, are you quite mad? In three feet of snow? Where?”

“In the dark woods,” she said, “among my soft-sleeping brothers and sisters. Across the high moors among the sweet-scented ghosts of my brothers and sisters long dead. Under the grey sky through the dreams and murmurs of my brothers and sisters yet to come.”

Strange stared at her. “What?”

With such gentle questioning as this to encourage her, it surprized no one that she said no more and at least one of the ladies began to think that it was her husband’s harshness that made her so quiet and made her answer in such odd strain.

Mrs Ayrton put her arm around Arabella and gently turned her towards the stairs. “Mrs Strange is tired,” she said firmly. “Come, my dear, let you and I go up to …”

“Oh, no!” declared Strange. “Not yet! I wish to know where that gown came from. I beg your pardon, Mrs Ayrton, but I am quite determined to …”

He advanced towards them, but then stopt suddenly and stared down at the floor in puzzlement. Then he carefully stepped out of the way of something. “Jeremy! Where did this water come from? Just where Mrs Strange was standing.”

Jeremy Johns brought a candelabra to the foot of the stairs. There was a large pool. Then he and Strange peered at the ceiling and the walls. The other manservants became interested in the problem and so did the gentlemen.

While the men were thus distracted, Mrs Ayrton and the ladies led Arabella quietly away.