aura's words had caused to seethe within her, she was only able to
bring to the surface: "I--I didn't know."

"No?" Laura paused. "Well, you'll tell Mrs. Bradford I have been----"
And she hurried away down the drive; but she had not yet lost that air
of having left something unsaid which she had come on purpose to say.

Caroline could see her near the gate, then paused a moment as at the
approach of voices; and the next minute Mr. and Mrs. Graham came in,
accompanying Mrs. Bradford. Their attitudes were most plainly visible
to Caroline in the doorway, though she could not hear what was said;
Mrs. Bradford solidly engrossed in her own importance as a mourner--Mr.
Graham bending forward to speak to Laura, conciliatory, voluble; and
Laura herself unresponsive.

Caroline gave a last look at them before going indoors to take the
potatoes from the fire; and as she did so, she experienced one of those
sudden, blindingly clear moments of intuition common to almost every
one, in which the processes of fact, argument, reason are all skipped,
and the knowledge is there, full blown. She knew perfectly well that
Mr. and Mrs. Graham had felt it their solemn duty to inform Laura--with
the best intentions--of what was being said about Godfrey Wilson and
the girl on the promenade.

But before she had time to turn away the group dissolved, Laura going
on alone, while Mrs. Bradford and Mrs. Graham came up the drive. The
picture bit like acid into her mind. The three coming up the path; the
clear sky; the man with the barrow wheeling cement over the forlorn
dismantled part of the garden where the privet hedge had been.

But in the kitchen, while she was taking the potatoes from the steamer,
her face suddenly flushed crimson. "I aren't going to be frightened,"
she murmured to herself. "I aren't going to care what anybody says.
She would never break off her engagement because of a bit of scandal.
She's not that sort. They'll be married, all right."

Beneath her defiance, however, Caroline was terribly afraid. She
sub-consciously so dreaded the agony she must endure if he did come
after her again and she had to send him away. For that was what she
would do. Never for one second did she waver in her determination to
have no more to do with a man who could behave as he had done. She
couldn't help loving him, but she could help trusting him with her life.

Mrs. Bradford appeared, black and bulky in the kitchen doorway. "Oh,