Three
I
Hester went slowly up the stairs pushing back the dark hair from her highforehead. Kirsten Lindstrom met her at the top of the stairs.
“Has he gone?”
“Yes, he’s gone.”
“You have had a shock, Hester.” Kirsten Lindstrom laid a gentle hand onher shoulder. “Come with me. I will give you a little brandy. All this, it hasbeen too much.”
“I don’t think I want any brandy, Kirsty.”
“Perhaps you do not want it, but it will be good for you.”
Unresisting, the young girl allowed herself to be steered¹ along the pas-sage and into Kirsten Lindstrom’s own small sitting room. She took thebrandy that was offered her and sipped² it slowly. Kirsten Lindstrom saidin an exasperated³ voice:
“It has all been too sudden. There should have been warning. Why didnot Mr. Marshall write first?”
“I suppose Dr. Calgary wouldn’t let him. He wanted to come and tell ushimself.”
“Come and tell us himself, indeed! What does he think the news will doto us?”
“I suppose,” said Hester, in an odd, toneless voice, “he thought weshould be pleased.”
“Pleased or not pleased, it was bound to be a shock. He should not havedone it.”
“But it was brave of him, in a way,” said Hester. The colour came up inher face. “I mean, it can’t have been an easy thing to do. To come and tell afamily of people that a member of it who was condemned⁴ for murder anddied in prison was really innocent. Yes, I think it was brave of him—but Iwish he hadn’t all the same,” she added.
“That—we all wish that,” said Miss Lindstrom briskly.
Hester looked at her with her interest suddenly aroused from her ownpreoccupation.
“So you feel that too, Kirsty? I thought perhaps it was only me.”
“I am not a fool,” said Miss Lindstrom sharply. “I can envisage⁵ certainpossibilities that your Dr. Calgary does not seem to have thought about.”
Hester rose. “I must go to Father,” she said.
Kirsten Lindstrom agreed.
“Yes. He will have had time now to think what is best to be done.”

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