“It’s not funny, Alan. I’ve been talking to Mrs. Pilton. I was right about this house. We’ve got to leave at once. We’ve got to go back to London.”

In spite of his habitual preoccupation, something of her urgency communicated itself to him. For the first time in many weeks she had fully half his attention.

“You mustn’t listen to the locals round here,” he began reprovingly. “They’re an odd lot. They’ll have you believing anything.”

“Mrs. Pilton is a very—rational woman, in her way,” she insisted, and it crossed his mind that for a person of somewhat limited education and intelligence his sister’s choice of words was often inspired. “And she admitted to me only a few minutes ago that this house is—possessed.”

“My dear Effie—” he began, bringing his mind down to it at last.

“You’ve got to listen to me, Alan. It’s on account of Sabrina. It’s not healthy for her.”

“Nonsense. The child’s looking very well.”

“Alan, I’m worried about her. It’s that room upstairs— the one that belonged to the brother who d-died. She’s got into it again. Mrs. Pilton gave her the key!”

“Well, so long as the family don’t know—and who’s to tell them?—I can’t see that it matters much.”

Aunt Effie looked at him hopelessly. The task of explaining to him about the brightly lighted, empty room where Bella wouldn’t go, and about her unnerving interview with the housekeeper, was beyond her. Men were obtuse, inconsiderate wretches who made bad jokes at the wrong times, and never saw what was happening under their own noses. Men never tried to understand anything. Men....

Quite unexpectedly, even to herself, Aunt Effie began to cry.

“Effie!” He was thoroughly horrified. “Effie, what in the world—I had no idea you were so upset! Here— take my handkerchief! Effie, old girl, you mustn’t do this—!”

At last Aunt Effie blew her nose, and visibly braced herself.

“Alan, I want to go back to Town. Just as soon as possible.”

“But—good heavens, we’ve just settled in!” All his sympathy took flight before what he could only regard as her persistent unreasonableness.

“We must go, Alan. For Sabrina’s sake. We must get her away from that room. It’s not right for her to become so—obsessed—with a dead man’s things. It’s—it’s macabre! She might go mad!”

“I am the one,” said Father, with exaggerated patience, “who will go mad. Must we go all the way back to London to separate Sabrina from this—so-called obsession? Or would some other house in the district do?”

“No, no, we must go right away, Alan! Right away back to London! And I think Sabrina had better go off to some nice school again for a while, to occupy her mind.”