"Ah there you are!" she sighed, though I didn't quite know what she
meant by it. "Of course it's difficult for a woman to judge how far
to go," she went on. "I adore everything that gives a charm to life.
I'm intensely sensitive to form. But sometimes I draw back--don't
you see what I mean?--I don't quite see where I shall be landed. I
only want to be quiet, after all," Miss Ambient continued as if she
had long been baffled of this modest desire. "And one must be good,
at any rate, must not one?" she pursued with a dubious quaver--an
intimation apparently that what I might say one way or the other
would settle it for her. It was difficult for me to be very original
in reply, and I'm afraid I repaid her confidence with an unblushing
platitude. I remember, moreover, attaching to it an inquiry, equally
destitute of freshness and still more wanting perhaps in tact, as to
whether she didn't mean to go to church, since that was an obvious
way of being good. She made answer that she had performed this duty
in the morning, and that for her, of Sunday afternoons, supreme
virtue consisted in answering the week's letters. Then suddenly and
without transition she brought out: "It's quite a mistake about
Dolcino's being better. I've seen him and he's not at all right."

I wondered, and somehow I think I scarcely believed. "Surely his
mother would know, wouldn't she?"

She appeared for a moment to be counting the leaves on one of the
great beeches. "As regards most matters one can easily say what, in
a given situation, my sister-in-law will, or would, do. But in the
present case there are strange elements at work."

"Strange elements? Do you mean in the constitution of the child?"