ve me no opportunity to
gratify it. She checked the question that my change of expression must
have foreshadowed by a frown which warned me that she could not give any
reason for her suspicion in that company.

"Later on," she whispered, and got up from her seat in the window, leaving
me to puzzle over the still uncertain mystery of Brenda's disappearance.
Miss Bailey had not, apparently, overheard the confidence. She did not, in
any case, relinquish for an instant that air of simple, attentive
innocence which so admirably suited the fresh prettiness of her style.

There was little conversation over the breakfast table. We were all glad
to find an excuse for silence either in the pretence or reality of hunger.
Old Jervaise's excuse was, quite pathetically, only a pretence; but he
tried very hard to appear engrossed in the making of a hearty meal. His
manner had begun to fascinate me, and I had constantly to check myself
from staring at him. I found it so difficult to account satisfactorily for
the effect of dread that he in some way conveyed. It was, I thought, much
the effect that might have been produced by a criminal in danger of
arrest.

But all of us, in our different ways, were more than a little
uncomfortable. The whole air of the breakfast-table was one of
dissimulation. Gordon Hughes made occasional efforts in conversation that
were too glaringly irrelevant to the real subject of our thoughts. And
with each beginning of his, the others, particularly Olive, Mrs. Jervaise,
and little Nora Bailey, plunged gallantly into the new topic with
spasmodic fervour that expended itself in a couple of minutes, and
horribly emphasised the blank of silence that inevitably followed. We
talked as people talk who are passing the time while they wait for some
great event. But what event we could be awaiting, it was hard to
imagine--unless it were the sudden return of Brenda, with or without
Banks.

And, even when we had all finished, and were free to separate, we still
lingered for unnecessary minutes in the breakfast-room, as if we were
compelled to maintain our pretence until the last possible moment.

Old Jervaise was the first to go. He had made less effort to disguise his
preoccupation than any of us, and now his exit had something of
abruptness, as if he could no longer bear to maintain any further
semblance of disguise. One could only infer from the manner of his going
that he passionately desired either solitude or t