“Mad as Crazy Jane,” said Sir Anthony, telling me the story.  But I, who had never heard Aunt Maria’s side of the dispute, thought it very high-spirited of the old lady to come and hold out the olive-branch in so uncompromising a fashion.

Lady Fenimore then said that she had never wished to quarrel with Maria, and Sir Anthony declared that her patriotic sentiments did her credit, and that he was proud to receive her under his roof, and in a few minutes Maria was drinking tea and discussing the war in the most contented way in the world.

“I didn’t write to you on the occasion of the death of your two children because you knew I didn’t like you,” said this outspoken lady.  “I hate hypocrisy.  Also I thought that tribulation might chasten you in the eyes of the Lord.  I’ve discussed it with our Minister, a poor body, but a courageous man.  He told me I was unchristian.  Now, what with all this universal massacre going on and my unregenerate longing, old woman as I am, to wade knee-deep in German blood, I don’t know what the devil I am.”

The more Anthony told me of Aunt Maria, the more I liked her.

“Can’t I come round and make her acquaintance?” I cried.  “She’s the sort of knotty, solid human thing that I should love.  No wonder Althea was fond of her.”

“This happened a week ago.  She only stayed a night,” replied Sir Anthony.  “I wish to God we had never seen her or heard of her.”

And then the good, heart-wrung little man, who had been beating about the bush for half an hour, came straight to the point.

“You remember Althea’s visit to Scotland in January last year?”

“Perfectly,” said I.

He rose from his chair and looked at me in wrinkled anguish.

“She never went there,” he said.

That was what he had come to tell me.  A natural reference to the last visit of Althea to her aunt had established the stupefying fact.

“Althea’s last visit was in October, 1913,” said Miss Beccles.

“But we have letters from your house to prove she was with you in January,” said Sir Anthony.

Most methodical and correspondence-docketing of men, he went to his library and returned with a couple of letters.

The old lady looked them through grimly.

“Pretty vague.  No details.  Read ’em again, Anthony.”

When he had done so, she said:  “Well?”

Lady Fenimore objected:  “But Althea did stay with you.  She must have stayed with you.”

“All right, Edith,” said Maria, sitting bolt upright.  “Call me a liar, and have done with it.  I’ve come here at considerable dislocation of myself and my principles, to bury the hatchet for the sake of unity against the enemy, and this is how I’m treated.  I can only go back to Scotland at once.”

Sir Anthony succeeded in pacifying her.  The letters were evidence that Edith and himself believed that Althea was in Galloway at the time.  Maria’s denial had come upon them like a thunderclap, bewildering, stunning.  If Althea was not in Galloway, where was she?