‘Why, Miss Vaughan? Is something wrong?’ and she hurried to her. ‘My dear!’ she exclaimed, noting the pallor, ‘Is anything the matter?’
She fussed her all the way to a table and sat down, ‘Are you ill, my dear?’
‘I’d an awful headache, and Mr Blair said I could go home.’
‘I’m sorry, dear,’ and she rushed off to the kitchen, returning quickly with a glass of water and two aspirins. ‘There now! Take those. You’ll be all right. And after that I should rest in your room.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Gandell,’ and she swallowed the tablets and finished off the water. ‘Sorry to be a bother.’
‘You are no bother at all.’
‘I’ll go up now.’
‘Of course,’ and she came closer to her one remaining guest, and added, ‘I do hope you’ll be better by lunch time.’
Miss Vaughan stared, and didn’t seem to know the answer to that. She rose, and Mrs Gandell said abruptly, ‘Of course now that Mr Prothero has gone, I could let you have his room, it is larger than your own.’
It produced the faintest smile from Miss Vaughan. ‘Thank you, but I’m quite all right where I am, Mrs Gandell. I like my room, and do not wish to change it.’
‘I’m glad to know that,’ said Mrs Gandell, and longed for a cigarette.
‘And thanks for the aspirins.’
‘Tut! Tut! Nothing at all, my dear. I thought you would have liked a larger room.’
‘I would not have liked a larger room,’ said Miss Vaughan, and gathered up her things.
‘I …see.’
‘I’m glad of that. There are some people, Mrs Gandell, that simply do not see.’
‘Yes … all right now?’
‘I’m better now, thank you.’
‘I was wondering if you’d like to dine at my table this evening, Miss Vaughan?’
‘I’d rather not.’
‘As you wish.’
Miss Vaughan said thank you again, and stressed it. ‘You do not yourself go into the town very often, Mrs Gandell.’
Mrs Gandell was too surprised to answer.
‘Perhaps you do not like Garthmeilo?’
‘I don’t always want to go, and often I need not.’
‘Of course. Jones is a most helpful man.’
‘Most helpful, Miss Vaughan.’
‘How nice.’
‘Strange, but I feel rather worried today, Miss Vaughan,’ and the moment she said it, she regretted it.
‘People that worry are silly. Mr Prothero did not stay long.’
‘I hope he’ll return soon,’ replied Mrs Gandell.
‘I can see you are sorry he’s gone. People are like that. They just go.’
And Mrs Gandell stuttered back, ‘Yes … of course.’
‘You don’t feel at all lonely here, Miss Vaughan?’
On which Miss Vaughan sat down again, took off her spectacles, and slowly began to clean them. ‘What a question to ask, Mrs Gandell,’ she said, ‘as if it mattered.’
‘I mean … well, you are Welsh, that I know, I suppose you have your people, your father for instance .…’
Miss Vaughan looked up, frowned. ‘My father is not,’ she said.
‘How awful!’
‘He went over a cliff at Tenby, Mrs Gandell.’
‘I am sorry,’ but Miss Vaughan’s sudden laugh quite shocked her.
