And he said to himself, “What a nice girl she is.  What a thoroughly nice girl.”

* * * * *

But what he wanted, though he dreaded it, was news of Gwenda.  He didn’t know whether he could bring himself to ask for it, but he rather thought that Mary would know what he wanted and give it him without his asking.

That was precisely what Mary knew and did.

She was ready for him, alone in the gray and amber drawing-room, and she did it almost at once, before Alice or her father could come in.  Alice was out walking, she said, and her father was in the study.  They would be in soon.  She thus made Rowcliffe realise that if she was going to be abrupt it was because she had to be; they had both of them such a short time.

With admirable tact she assumed Rowcliffe’s interest in Ally and the Vicar.  It made it easier to begin about Gwenda.  And before she began it seemed to her that she had better first find out if he knew.  So she asked him point-blank if he had heard from Gwenda?

“No,” he said.

At her name he had winced visibly.  But there was hope even in his hurt eyes.  It sprang from Mary’s taking it for granted that he would be likely to hear from her sister.

“We only heard—­really,” said Mary, “the other day.”

“Is that so?”

“Of course she wrote; but she didn’t say much, because, at first, I’m afraid, there wasn’t very much to say.”

“And is there?”

Rowcliffe’s hands were trembling slightly.  Mary looked down at them and away.

“Well, yes.”

And she told him that Gwenda had got a secretaryship to Lady Frances Gilbey.

It would have been too gross to have told him about Gwenda’s salary.  But it might have been the salary she was thinking of when she added that it was of course an awfully good thing for Gwenda.

“And who,” said Rowcliffe, “is Lady Frances Gilbey?”

“She’s a cousin of my stepmother’s.”

He considered it.

“And Mrs.—­er—­Cartaret lives in London, doesn’t she?”

“Oh, yes.”

Mary’s tone implied that you couldn’t expect that brilliant lady to live anywhere else.

There was a moment in which Rowcliffe again evoked the image of the third Mrs. Cartaret who was “the very one.”  If anything could have depressed him more, that did.

But he pulled himself together.  There were things he had to know.

“And does your sister like living in London?”

Mary smiled.  “I imagine she does very much indeed.”

“Somehow,” said Rowcliffe, “I can’t see her there.  I thought she liked the country.”

“Oh, you never can tell whether Gwenda really likes anything.  She may have liked it.  She may have liked it awfully.  But she couldn’t go on liking it forever.”

And to Rowcliffe it was as if Mary had said that wasn’t Gwenda’s way.