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die in their mouths. I
think they learned rather more from those eyes than from the close-typed
pamphlets thrust into their hands.
    * * *
    But we must now pass to the
debit side of the relationship. First and foremost would undoubtedly have
been: "She goes out alone." The arrangement had initially been that Miss
Sarah should have one afternoon a week free, which was considered by Mrs.
Poulteney a more than generous acknowledgment of her superior status vis-a-vis
the maids' and only then condoned by the need to disseminate tracts; but
the vicar had advised it. All seemed well for two months. Then one morning
Miss Sarah did not appear at the Marlborough House matins; and when the
maid was sent to look for her, it was discovered that she had not risen.
Mrs. Poulteney went to see her. Again Sarah was in tears, but on this occasion
Mrs. Poulteney felt only irritation. However, she sent for the doctor.
He remained closeted with Sarah a long time. When he came down to the impatient
Mrs. Poulteney, he gave her a brief lecture on melancholia--he was an advanced
man for his time and place--and ordered her to allow her sinner more fresh
air and freedom.
    " If you insist on the most
urgent necessity for it."
    " My dear madam, I do. And
most emphatically. I will not be responsible otherwise."
    " It is very inconvenient."
But the doctor was brutally silent. "I will dispense with her for two afternoons."
    Unlike the vicar, Doctor
Grogan was not financially very dependent on Mrs. Poulteney; to be frank,
there was not a death certificate in Lyme he would have less sadly signed
than hers. But he contained his bile by reminding her that she slept every
afternoon; and on his own strict orders. Thus it was that Sarah achieved
a daily demi-liberty.
    The next debit item was this:
"May not always be present with visitors." Here Mrs. Poulteney found herself
in a really intolerable dilemma. She most certainly wanted her charity
to be seen, which meant that Sarah had to be seen. But that face had the
most harmful effect on company. Its sadness reproached; its very rare interventions
in conversation-- invariably prompted by some previous question that had
to be answered (the more intelligent frequent visitors soon learned to
make their polite turns towards the companion-secretary clearly rhetorical
in nature and intent)--had a disquietingly decisive character about them,
not through any desire on Sarah's part to kill the subject but simply because
of the innocent imposition of simplicity or common sense on some matter
that thrived on the opposite qualities. To Mrs. Poulteney she seemed in
this context only too much like one of the figures on a gibbet she dimly
remembered from her youth.
    Once again Sarah showed her
diplomacy. With certain old-established visitors, she remained; with others
she either withdrew in the first few minutes or discreetly left when they
were announced and before they were ushered in. This latter reason was
why Ernestina had never met her at Marlborough House. It at least allowed
Mrs. Poulteney to expatiate on the cross she had to carry, though the cross's
withdrawal or absence implied a certain failure in her skill in carrying
it, which was most tiresome. Yet Sarah herself could hardly be faulted.
    But I have left the worst
matter to the end. It was this: "Still shows signs of attachment to her
seducer." Mrs. Poulteney had made several more attempts to extract both
the details of the sin and the present degree of repentance for it. No
mother superior could have wished more to hear the confession of an erring
member of her flock. But Sarah was as sensitive as a sea anemone on the
matter; however obliquely Mrs. Poulteney approached the subject, the sinner
guessed what was coming; and her answers first interrogation.
    Now Mrs. Poulteney seldom
went out, and never on foot, and in her barouche only to the houses of
her equals, so that she had to rely on other eyes for news of Sarah's activities
outside her house. Fortunately for her