On Sunday Nell was watched from eight in the morning.
It began at the foot of the east stairs, where Sibyl Vantreux had a way of already being, and it went on through the hall, the gun-room passage, the still-room and the back landing, at a distance of about fifteen feet, with a workbag.
She did not pretend to be doing anything else, which Nell found almost admirable. She carried a chair into the gun-room passage and sat in it with her mending on her knee while Nell took wall temperatures at six-foot intervals, and when Nell moved to the back landing Sibyl carried the chair after her and set it down and sat in it again.
“You’ll get a cold in your hip, ma’am, sitting in that draught.”
“I am not obliged to leave a stranger alone in my brother’s house,” Sibyl said, “and it is Sunday, and there…
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