He failed,
indeed, altogether, to decipher her mind toward Newbury; or to get at the
truth of what had happened between them. She sat, very pale, and piteously
composed; answering the questions they put to her, and sometimes,
though rarely, unable to control a sob, which seemed to force its way
unconsciously. At the end of their cross-examination, when Sir Wilfrid was
ready to start for Martover, the police headquarters for the district, she
rose, and said she would go back to her room.
"Do, do, dear child!" Bury threw a fatherly arm round her, and went with
her to the foot of the stairs. "Go and rest--sleep if you can."
As Marcia moved away there was a sudden sound at the end of the hall.
Arthur had run hurriedly toward the door leading to the outer vestibule. He
opened it and disappeared. Through the high-arched windows to the left, a
boy on a bicycle could be seen descending the long central avenue leading
to the fore-court.
It was just noon. The great clock set in the center of the eastern facade
had chimed the hour, and as its strokes died away on the midsummer air
Marcia was conscious, as her mother had been the preceding afternoon, of an
abnormal stillness round her.
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