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little fluttering hands were reaching out to her. She went forward to the sofa and sat down on the edge of it. Cousin Sophy went on talking in an excited thread of a voice.
    “I think you ought to go, my dear. She was very nice about it. Rather grand in her manner, but then Agnes always was rather grand. I knew her very well when she was a girl, before the quarrel. I am older than she is of course—let me see— ten—no, twelve years older. But the Ferrers and the Fanes saw a lot of each other at that time. My grandfather John Ferrers and Mary Ferrers who married Thomas Fane and was Agnes’s grandmother, and of course your father’s too, were brother and sister, so Agnes and I are second cousins. And she was very polite, asking about my health and saying she was afraid I must feel the cold weather and the bombs, which everybody doesn’t trouble about when it’s a long-distance call. My dear father always said that when everybody had a telephone nobody would have any manners, because there wouldn’t be time for them. And of course he was perfectly right, because by the time it has clicked on and clicked off, and you’re not sure how many minutes you’ve had, and you’re not sure if you’ve said what you were going to say, even the politest person is apt to find that they are being a little abrupt.”
    Laura smiled. She loved Cousin Sophy, and it was restful not to have to talk. You didn’t have to with Cousin Sophy. She loved an audience, and sooner or later she got everything said.
    “I haven’t seen Agnes for twenty-two years, but her voice hasn’t changed. She must be fifty-seven—or is it fifty-eight— I’m really not quite sure—but her voice hasn’t changed. She had a contralto singing voice too, very deep and striking, but my dear father considered that she had too dramatic a style for an amateur. He had no objection to singing as a drawing-room accomplishment—it was still fashionable when I was a girl—but there was something about the way in which Agnes sang Infelice and Tosti’s Goodbye which he considered inappropriate to the family circle or a concert at the village hall. I remember she used to look very handsome and proud when she was singing, and she always looked at your father, which was just a little embarrassing, because—well, you won’t know either of those songs, my dear, they’ve really gone quite out of fashion. But they were—well, I don’t quite like to say so, but there really isn’t any other word for it—quite passionate.”
    Laura had a sudden picture of Agnes Fane singing passionately to the Vicar, the village, and Oliver Fane. It came across the years, sharp and bright, and painful with an old pain which had never been forgotten.
    Cousin Sophy flowed on.
    “My brother Jack used to say, ‘If Agnes rides such a high horse she’ll be getting a fall one of these days.’ He was inclined to be in love with her, and it would not have done at all, because they both had terrible tempers. They were always quarrelling and making it up. And then one day they quarrelled and they didn’t make it up. And Jack was killed in the last war, so if she had married him Agnes would have been a widow all this time. But of course she never really thought of anyone except your father.”
    It was just on seven o’clock when the new young parlourmaid opened the door and began to say, “Will you see Miss Lyle—” She had been specially told to say ma’am by Beecher, Miss Sophy’s maid who had been with her for thirty years, but she never got it out, because Tanis Lyle walked right past her into the room.
    “You will, won’t you, Cousin Sophy?” she said in a clear, ringing voice, and before there was time for anyone else to speak, there she was, touching Miss Sophy’s hand and slipping out of a fur coat.
    Laura found herself taking the coat like a lady-in-waiting. Lovely fur—so light and soft. She put it down over a chair and turned to see Tanis, bareheaded in a short, slinky