“I never shall cease to regret that I didn’t see you in The Reproach of Galilee” Duff said; “everyone who knows the least bit about it said you were marvellous in that.”

“Marvellous,” said Alicia.

Hilda gazed straight before her for an instant without speaking.  The others looked at her absent eyes.  “A bazaar trick or two helped me,” she said, and glanced with vivacity at any other subject that might be hanging on the wall or visible out of the window.

“And are you really invincible about not putting it on again in Calcutta?” Duff asked.

“Not in Calcutta, or anywhere.  The rest hate it—­nobody has a chance but me,” Hilda said, and got up.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Alicia began, but Miss Howe was already half way out of the discussion in the direction of the door.  There was often a brusqueness in her comings and goings, but she usually left a flavour of herself behind.  One turned with facility to talk about her, this being the easiest way of applying the stimulus that came of talking to her.  It was more conspicuous than either of these two realised that they accepted her retreat without a word, that there was even between them a consciousness of satisfaction that she had gone.

“This morning’s mail,” said Alicia, smiling brightly at him, “brought you a letter, I know.”  It was extraordinary how detached she was from her vital personal concern in him.  It seemed relegated to some background of her nature while she occupied herself with the play of circumstances or was lost in her observation of him.

“How kind of you to think of it,” Lindsay said.  “This was the first by which I could possibly hear from England.”

“Ah, well, now you will have no more anxiety.  Letters from on board ship are always difficult to write and unsatisfactory,” Alicia said.  Miss Filbert’s had been postcards, with a wide unoccupied margin at the bottom.

“The Sutlej seems to have arrived on the 3rd; that’s a day later, isn’t it, than we made out she would be?”

Alicia consulted her memory and found she couldn’t be sure.  Lindsay was vexed by a similar uncertainty, but they agreed that the date was early in the month.

“Did they get comfortably through the Canal?  I remember being tied up there for forty-eight hours once.”

“I don’t think she says, so I fancy it must have been all right.  The voyage is bound to do her good.  I’ve asked the Simpsons to watch particularly for any sign of malaria later, though.  One can’t possibly know what she may have imported from that slum in Bentinck street.”

“And what was it like after Gibraltar?” Alicia asked, with a barely perceptible glance at the envelope edges showing over his breast pocket.