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She had no choice but to deliver Mr. Baylis’s message, but on the other hand she was quite sure that Mrs. Baylis would be extremely displeased if she knew that part of her conversation with Sue had been overheard.
    Then Sue came out of the study, her face tear stained and blotchy. Evidently she was too upset to notice Kit, for she stumbled against her as she rushed upstairs so that she had to grab at the banister to keep her balance.
    Mrs. Baylis stepped out into the hall.
    “Yes, Nurse, what is it?”
    “Mr. Baylis asked me to say that he would like to see you for a moment before you go,” Kit explained.
    She went quickly upstairs, and Kit followed more slowly, determined not to overhear any more conversations, however unwittingly.
    But at least it explained one thing to Kit. The measure of success that Sue achieved in running the house was not due to any particular skill of her own. She simply carried out Mrs. Baylis’s orders, and that they were extremely careful and detailed Kit did not doubt.
    Still wishing she hadn’t overheard, Kit realized there was nothing she could do about it, because it simply wasn’t her business. She wished she’d never gone there!
    She even thought of giving up the job, but the difficulty was to find a reason which would satisfy both the Baylises and her agency, which not unnaturally wanted the nurses they placed to be reliable. And in any case, Jason had said she was really helping Mr. Baylis, so professional integrity demanded that she see it through. But though she quickly reached this conclusion, she had an uneasy feeling that she had not yet heard the last of the affair.
    She was quite right. That evening at dinner Noel took it into his head to tease Sue because she was hardly eating anything.
    “It’s my belief you made the cook put arsenic in the gravy,” he told her, helping himself generously as he did so from the gravy boat. “In a few moments we’ll all start groaning and writhing, and then we’ll fall into our plates—a nasty mess! But you’ll be all right, because you’ve only eaten about enough to keep a sparrow going! Here, Sue, what’s up? I didn’t mean...”
    For Sue, obviously keeping her tears back with difficulty, pushed back her chair and fled from the room.
    “Here, I’d better go and see what’s wrong,” Noel suggested, but Mrs. Baylis put a hand on his arm.
    “I wouldn’t if I were you, Noel. Actually she had rather an unpleasant experience with one of the kitchen maids this morning, for which she feels to blame,” she explained. “The girl was grossly impertinent to Sue.”
    “Oh, my dear, we can’t have that,” Mr. Baylis said, frowning. “The girl will have to go.”
    “I’ve already told her that,” Mrs. Baylis announced regretfully. “A pity, because she was shaping up quite nicely. But I did feel there was nothing else to do. After all, Sue is one of the family, and I don’t think she should be treated as if she were one of the servants.”
    “Certainly not,” Mr. Baylis confirmed. “You’re absolutely right.”
    Mrs. Baylis smiled her thanks at his approval, but Kit was so deeply shocked at Mrs. Baylis’s duplicity that she kept her eyes on her plate. It was, of course, essential that Mr. Baylis not be worried at the present time, but surely it would have been possible to explain Sue’s tears without shifting the blame for them from her own shoulders onto those of the kitchen maid. Uneasily Kit realized that there was a deeper significance to the incident.
    Suddenly she realized that Noel was watching h er intently, and though she made an excuse not to go to the drawing room after dinner, Noel managed to find an opportunity to say very quietly, “You know, we’ve never had that little chat I spoke of! I think it’s time we did, don’t you?”
    “No,” Kit said bluntly.
    Noel’s eyes narrowed.
    “You remember, I asked you from whom you were going to take orders,” he remarked significantly.
    “This has nothing to