Inside the Club, which was all dark panelling and thick carpets and sporting prints, she pushed open a door, and Miss Mayfield, following, found herself in a ladies’ cloakroom.

‘Now, just for fun,’ Miss Benson said, ‘let me try my hand on you. Look, everything straight from the shop, in case you’re fussy. Far more hygienic than if you went for a facial, however high-class . . . Just sit down and let me play around for a bit. If you don’t like it, you can wash it all off again.’

There was something almost macabre about sitting there, now and again glancing into the looking-glass and seeing her whole appearance change, while behind that mask which was her face the thoughts went on. Ethel Rigby was not in Yarmouth with Miss Bedfellow. Where, then? Where?

‘Perfectly clean comb, look!’ said Miss Benson, who seemed to have gathered – where from Miss Mayfield could not imagine – that her headmistress was a fanatic about cleanliness.

She damped the comb, ran it through Miss Mayfield’s hair, remembering – and somehow that cheered Miss Mayfield more than the transformation in her appearance – the scar.

‘I must be careful; it was this side, wasn’t it? That was a thing! You know I tried to come and see you, twice. The first time they said no visitors, and the second time they said you’d just left. I often wondered if you thought I’d been a bit casual about the whole thing. Did you?’

All the while her slim brown fingers were making little curls and nipping them into place.

‘Oh no. They were so strict. I never saw anyone the whole time I was in Wandford.’

‘But Canon Thorby told Uncle Eric he’d—’

She broke off, and in the glass their eyes met and held for an interminable moment.

‘Oh, well, I may have it wrong. Uncle Eric is inclined to waffle on, and I don’t always listen. There. How’s that? Though I say it myself, Elizabeth Arden herself couldn’t have done better in the time.’

Miss Mayfield forced herself to show interest and enthusiasm.

‘I don’t look a bit like myself,’ she said, paying Miss Benson’s handiwork the highest compliment within her power to give.

‘Come on, then,’ Miss Benson said; and carrying her new face carefully, Miss Mayfield followed her back into the hall and thence, up a few stairs, into the bar, where the first person they saw was Mr Freeman, who usually whiled away the time between leaving his office and returning to his lonely home by drinking two glasses of sherry and picking up what gossip he could in the Club.

He jumped to his feet at once, greeted Miss Benson with delight and, in his turn, paid her handiwork the compliment of not recognizing her companion. When Miss Benson, in her offhand way, effected the introduction, he was so much surprised, and so shocked by his surprise, that he was almost babbling.