ford was seated with her back towards the door at a
writing-table placed between the windows. She did not immediately
turn, but instead looked up, meeting the reflection of her visitors in
a mirror on the wall. It was the first time Esther had seen her
without a hat, and she found her not less lovely. Her golden-brown
shining hair waved back from a side parting with that carefully
contrived artlessness which is the crowning achievement of a coiffeur,
and in colour it exactly matched her soft frock, which was of the
sports variety with a finely pleated skirt. The skin of her throat was
milky-white and of the fineness of a flower petal. Against it her
pearls showed a faint rosy tinge. She was smoking a cigarette through
a long holder.

"Therese, this is our other nurse, who has just come. You remember you
saw her at the doctor's the other day?"

The Frenchwoman laid down her pen and turned towards Esther with a
bright, perfunctory smile.

"Ah, yes, I remember."

Her grey eyes looked Esther over appraisingly from head to foot, then
returned to the sheet of paper on the desk. Miss Clifford spoke again,
with slight hesitation.

"What I really came to tell you, Therese, is that I have just had a
telegram from Roger."

"From Roger?"

The younger woman stared blankly.

"A cable, you mean, not a telegram."

"No, a telegram, from Cherbourg. He says he will be here to-morrow."

With a bound Lady Clifford sprang to her feet.

"Roger here to-morrow?" she exclaimed almost sharply, her eyes fixed on
her sister-in-law's face. "But it is impossible; you must be mistaken."

Her cigarette fell out of the holder to the floor, where it would have
burned a hole in the carpet if Esther had not quietly picked it up.

"That's what he says."

"Let me see the telegram."

She snatched it rather brusquely from the other woman's hand and
scanned it frowningly, her vivid red underlip caught between her teeth.
Miss Clifford looked embarrassed. Esther moved unobtrusively across
the room and examined the crystal lustres on the mantelpiece.

"Yes, but I do not understand. How is it he has come back so much
sooner than he expected and without letting us know?"

"I can only suppose he has finished his work there and thought he would
give us a surprise."

The younger woman gave back the telegram and turned with a slight shrug
of her shoulders.

"I think he might have written us he was coming," she said with a sort
of re