at when she was eccentric in the past, one could trace
it back to the heart in the long-run. She behaved oddly because she
cared for some one, or wanted to help them. There's no possible excuse
for her now. She is grieving us deeply, and that is why I am sure that
she is not well. 'Mad' is too terrible a word, but she is not well.
I shall never believe it. I shouldn't discuss my sister with you if I
thought she was well--trouble you about her, I mean."

Henry began to grow serious. Ill-health was to him something perfectly
definite. Generally well himself, he could not realise that we sink to
it by slow gradations. The sick had no rights; they were outside the
pale; one could lie to them remorselessly. When his first wife was
seized, he had promised to take her down into Hertfordshire, but
meanwhile arranged with a nursing-home instead. Helen, too, was ill. And
the plan that he sketched out for her capture, clever and well-meaning
as it was, drew its ethics from the wolf-pack.

"You want to get hold of her?" he said. "That's the problem, isn't it?
She has got to see a doctor."

"For all I know she has seen one already."

"Yes, yes; don't interrupt." He rose to his feet and thought intently.
The genial, tentative host disappeared, and they saw instead the man who
had carved money out of Greece and Africa, and bought forests from the
natives for a few bottles of gin. "I've got it," he said at last. "It's
perfectly easy. Leave it to me. We'll send her down to Howards End."

"How will you do that?"

"After her books. Tell her that she must unpack them herself. Then you
can meet her there."

"But, Henry, that's just what she won't let me do. It's part of
her--whatever it is--never to see me."

"Of course you won't tell her you're going. When she is there, looking
at the cases, you'll just stroll in. If nothing is wrong with her, so
much the better. But there'll be the motor round the corner, and we can
run her to a specialist in no time."

Margaret shook her head. "It's quite impossible."

"Why?"

"It doesn't seem impossible to me," said Tibby; "it is surely a very
tippy plan."

"It is impossible, because--" She looked at her husband sadly. "It's not
the particular language that Helen and I talk, if you see my meaning. It
would do splendidly for other people, whom I don't blame."

"But Helen doesn't talk," said Tibby. "That's our whole difficulty. She
won't talk your particular language, and on that account y