Master of Melincourt by Susan Barrie Page A

have a fit or something, if no one let you out!”
    “I’m sorry you seem to have had a disturbed evening,” Edwina replied, looking at her distantly with far-away eyes, “but mine wasn’t particularly comfortable. However, I didn’t have a fit, or anything of that kind, so you can allow your anxiety to abate. But why didn’t you let me out as you promised?” she enquired with sudden biting sharpness. “Are your promises like pie-crust, or did you forget that you’d locked me up in the stables?”
    Tina drew a deep breath.
    “I didn’t forget... of course I didn’t forget. But I just didn’t have the chance to do what I promised. When I got back here after—after locking you up, the vicar was here, and he wanted to see you as well as me, so I had to pretend you’d be in any moment, and he sat there talking and talking ... and of course you didn’t come, and at last he had to go away. And then Mrs. Blythe sent me down to the kitchen to fetch our supper because Anne, the housemaid who looks after us, had sprained her ankle or something like that, and had had to go down to the doctor’s surgery. And then on my way upstairs I dropped the tray with the plates and knives and things on it, and all the china was smashed, and there was a horrible mess, and Mrs. Blythe was so cross she sent me to bed without my supper ... and I’d already told her that you didn’t want any because you’d got a headache. I said you thought you’d got a touch of sun.”
    “Highly inventive of you,” Edwina commented coldly—indeed, with nothing short of arctic coldness. “I don’t think your uncle realises what a clever child you are. And what happened after you were sent to bed without your supper? Did the lack of food deprive you of the strength to go across and let me out?”
    “N-no, of course not ... But I thought I’d wait until Mrs. Blythe had had her supper, and had gone to her sitting-room to watch television, and then steal out and let you out. But by that time,” she admitted, “it was dark, and I—I don’t like the dark—”
    “You mean you’re afraid of the dark?” with scathing coolness.
    “I’ve never been out alone in the dark,” the child defended herself, “and it’s a long way to the stables.”
    “It was also very dark in the stables, since I neglected to find out the position of the electric light switch,” Edwina informed her, with the same air of frozen calm. “But I’ve no doubt if you’d thought of it you’d have been good enough to inform me where it was before you left me to my own devices.”
    Tina sounded suddenly exasperated.
    “But I didn’t mean to do it! I mean, I didn’t mean you to be there in the dark !” she attempted to convince Edwina.
    “But you did mean to shut me in, didn’t you? That wasn’t by any chance the result of a mental aberration ? ”
    “A mental wh-what?”
    “Oh, forget it!” Edwina rose from her knees, and looked down in an appalled fashion at her stained cotton dress. A long, long time ago she had been looking forward to a bath and a change of garments, but that seemed so long ago now that it might have been in another existence. However, she was beginning to feel a little warmer, and her teeth were less inclined to chatter, and altogether she felt stronger and more like herself. The sight of the child’s concern aroused a measure of sympathy inside her, for Tina’s face was so woebegone and so apprehensive that it was plain she had had a good many twinges of conscience during the course of the evening, and no doubt, also, her imagination had pictured a good many things happening to Edwina.
    There must have been moments when the thought of what she had done—and could not, apparen tl y, undo—came near to filling her with a larger amount of alarm than she had felt in the whole course of her life up till now.
    “I think we’d better forget what happened tonight,” Edwina said distinctly ... and, she realised, with decidedly unfair