“How silent you are,” she said gently.

Hartley flushed and looked self-conscious.

“To be quite candid, that was what I was thinking of you,” he replied awkwardly.

“What were we saying?” went on Mrs. Wilder.  “Oh, of course, I remember.  You thought I could tell you something about poor Mr. Heath, didn’t you?  I only wish I could, but it was so long ago.  I do remember the evening.  It was very hot and I rode along by the river to get some fresh air,” her eyes grew hazy.  “I can remember thinking that Mangadone looked as if it was a great ball of amber, with the sun shining through it, but as for being able to tell you what Mr. Heath was doing, or who he was with, it is impossible.  You should have pinned me down to it the day you called on me, when this troublesome little boy first went off.”  She gathered up the reins, and Hartley mounted reluctantly.  “I am so sorry.  I would love to be able to help you, but I cannot remember.”

If Hartley had been asked on oath how it was that Mrs. Wilder had led him clean away from the subject under discussion, to something infinitely more satisfying and interesting, he could not have sworn to it.  They loitered by the road and came slowly back to the bungalow, where they parted at the gate, and he watched her go in, hoping she might turn her head, but she did not, and Hartley took his way towards his own house and thought very little of Absalom or the Rev. Francis Heath.  One thing he did think of, and that was that Mrs. Wilder had looked at him earnestly, and said that she wished he was not “mixed up” in anything likely to bring uneasiness to the mind of the Rector of St. Jude’s Church.  “Mixed up” was a curious way of expressing his connection with the case, but Hartley felt that he knew what she meant.  He pulled at his short moustache and wished with all his heart that he really did know; but all the wishes in the world could not help him out of a professional dilemma.

Mrs. Wilder had not looked round, though she very well knew that Hartley was waiting and hoping that she would, and once she had turned the first bend she touched the pony with her heel and cantered up the hill, throwing the reins to the syce who came in answer to her impatient call.

“Idiot,” she said, as she shut the door of her room and flung her topi on the bed, and she repeated the word several times with increasing animosity and vigour.  She hated Hartley at that moment, and felt under no further obligation to hide her real feelings; and then Mrs. Wilder sat down and thought hard.

The mental power of exaggerating danger is limitless, and she could not deny that her fear was playing tricks with her nerves.  She knew that she had done creditably under the strain of acute nervous tension, but she felt also that much more of the same thing would be unendurable.

Draycott came in to luncheon, and she was there to receive him, but even to his careless eye, Clarice was oddly abstracted, and he glanced at her curiously, wondering what it was that occupied her mind and made her frown as she thought.