“But I have just found all the lights on up there,” said Aunt Effie, and her eyes were round and scared, and sought reassurance.

Sabrina tried to lie.

“Oh, yes—I did run up for just a minute on my way to bed—to make sure I’d put my book back, I mean. I must have left them on then.”

“Bella wouldn’t go up there with me just now,” said Aunt Effie, grave and nervous and not satisfied. “Not an inch beyond the bottom step. I thought she might be going off into one of her barking spells, but she only stood there, looking queer.”

“Bella’s fat and lazy,” Sabrina hazarded unconvincingly, conscious that her heart was beating rather fast. “What made you think the lights were on up there?”

“I didn’t think they were on, I saw them. I turned them off myself. I noticed light between the curtains when I went out for my scissors, and I thought it was you reading his books again—”

“Not guilty this time—but it’s my fault all the same,” she added quickly with compunction, for Aunt Effie looked badly shaken. She knew it would be useless to try to explain Hilary to Aunt Effie, who wasn’t friends with him and therefore was bound to think he couldn’t (or shouldn’t) be there, or that she (Sabrina) was imagining things. It was very tiresome of him to have given himself away like that, and started Aunt Effie thinking. What a mercy she didn’t know about the dust-sheets too! Looking at it from Aunt Effie’s viewpoint, she could concede that it might be very disturbing to have someone round the house who moved things and left lights on and yet couldn’t be seen. If it hadn’t been Hilary, she might not have liked it herself, thought Sabrina, striving to be fair.

Aunt Effie came to the bed and kissed her perfunctorily.

“Good-night, dear. Don’t read too late. Come, Bella—”

“Good-night, Auntie.”

Aunt Effie went down to the living-room and found her needlework in its embroidered bag with wooden handles. Then she rang the bell, and settled herself in an armchair under a bridge-lamp.

It was Jennie who answered the bell.

“Please tell Mrs. Pilton I want to speak to her,” said Aunt Effie, with hardly a glance up from her busy needle.

In a few minutes the housekeeper stood before her in the lamplight, composed and inscrutable as always. Aunt Effie found it even more awkward than she had anticipated.

“Did you give my niece the key to that room upstairs?” she began, rather obliquely.

“Yes, I did. I knew it was the only way to stop her fretting.”

“But you knew it was against my wishes.”

“I hoped you might overlook that if you saw a change for the better in her.”