“May I go off to Ferry Place now?” asked Enid eagerly.
“Do, if you like. But be careful what you say, child.” She gazed into the girl’s flushed face. “I think we ought to do what we know Roger would wish us to do—and not to do.”
And then, with a slight break in her even voice, she quoted the fine line—“For silence is most noble to the end.”
As Enid Dent walked with what, to one passing her, would have appeared to be the happy, eager steps of youth towards Ferry Place, she more than once felt strongly inclined to turn back.
The thought of going to the house where Roger Gretorex had lived and worked during the months when he and she had become so entirely estranged was bitter to her. Also, she now had to endure the incessant talking and the kindly meant, but to her almost intolerable, sympathy of the landlady of Mrs. Gretorex’s lodgings. The thought that she would now endure more sympathy, and more garrulous talk, on the part of Mrs. Huntley was well nigh unendurable. Why not go back and write a nice letter to the old woman, explaining that Mrs. Gretorex was ill, but wished Mrs. Huntley to know how deep was her gratitude for everything she had done for her dear son?
And then, just as she was going to turn around, Enid felt ashamed of her strained nerves. If this old woman had been fond of Roger, then she must be very unhappy now.
She had to ask the way twice to Ferry Place, and each time she asked the question she saw a peculiar look come over the stranger’s face, showing, plainly enough, that he had recalled the fact that this was where Roger Gretorex had lived, the man who had committed murder for the sake of the woman he loved. The name of the obscure thoroughfare had been constantly mentioned, bandied to and fro, during Gretorex’s trial.
Enid soon found the double row of shabby little houses. It was strange to remember that Roger had lived for over a year in this sordid-looking place.
She walked slowly down the middle of the roadway till she reached No. 6. It looked just a little cleaner and “better class” than the houses on each side of it.
She knocked, and the door was opened almost at once, revealing a grey-haired, sad-faced old woman, who, before the visitor could speak, said sharply, “You’ve made a mistake. No one lives here now.”
“I’ve come from Mrs. Gretorex,” said Enid in a low voice.
And then the door, which had been nearly closed in her face, was opened widely.
“Come in, miss. Come in, do!” and the old woman opened a door to the left, and showed the visitor into what had been Roger Gretorex’s consulting-room. It was bare and poor-looking, but the girl, with a stab of pain, saw at once a small piece of furniture which had always stood in what was still called “the day nursery” at Anchorford Hall.
“Mrs. Gretorex is ill, or she would have come herself. But she has given me a message for you, Mrs. Huntley. She wishes me to tell you how grateful—how grateful—”
And then all at once Enid Dent broke down, and burst into a storm of tears.
She had not so “let herself go,” at any rate not in the daytime, since the end of Roger Gretorex’s trial. But somehow now, with this stranger, she didn’t care. It was such a comfort to have a good cry, and something seemed to tell her that this sad, anxious-looking old woman would understand, and sympathise with, her grief.
Mrs. Huntley pushed the sobbing girl gently down into the worn leather armchair in which Gretorex would sometimes put a delicate-looking woman patient—the sort of patient who did not care to go into the surgery.
“I suppose,” said Mrs. Huntley in a troubled voice, “that you was the doctor’s young lady, miss?”
It somehow comforted Enid to hear those simple words, uttered in so quiet, if pitying a tone.
“I think I was,” she sobbed. “Indeed, I am sure I was—though that was a long time ago, Mrs. Huntley.”
“I know,” came the low-toned answer. And the old woman did know, perhaps better than anyone else in the world, why Roger Gretorex had left off thinking of the girl who now sat, the picture of despair, before her.
Enid suddenly got up. She dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief.
“And now,” she said, “let me deliver the rest of my message, Mrs. Huntley. Mrs. Gretorex knows how good you were to her son, and she wants me to tell you that a little later on she would like you to come down to Anchorford, for she does want to see you.”
“Later on?” echoed the old woman in a strange voice. “But that would be too late, miss. I has to see Mrs. Gretorex today for it to be of any good. Can’t you take me to her? Not that I likes to leave the house alone. I never do leave it—not since I got the message from Mr. Oram that I was to regard myself as caretaker, that is.”
“I am afraid you can’t see Mrs. Gretorex today,” said Enid firmly. “But I’ll give her any message, and—and you can trust me, Mrs. Huntley, you really can!”
“I wonder if I can? I wonder if I dare?”
“Have you anything to say that we don’t already know?” she asked.
“Yes, I have, miss. But in telling it I may be doing wrong.”
“D’you mean something about Dr. Gretorex? Something that might, even now, make a difference?”
“I don’t know. I can’t tell. I fear me it may be too late.”
“Let me judge of that,” said Enid Dent.
She had become quiet, collected, though she was filled with a feeling of suspense and, she dared not call it “hope.”
“Shall I tell you?” said Mrs. Huntley as if asking herself the
