After this sort of thing had happened a few times Livia grew convinced that there was a ‘mystery’ about her mother and old Mr. Felsby, and once the idea got into her head she was quick to notice other evidences of mystery—certain occasions, for instance, just before and just after her mother went away for a few days, when a curious air of tension filled the entire house, when even Sarah and Miss Fortescue seemed to rush from room to room with secrets as well as pins filling their mouths. Livia noted too the almost guilty look they had if she interrupted them at such times; it made her determined to discover what everything was all about, like the detectives in some of her favourite stories. Actually ‘the Mystery of Stoneclough’ (as she privately decided to call it) gave her an added interest in life, since it was clearly more exciting to LIVE in a detective story than merely to read one, especially when the detective was herself. For that matter, she sometimes imagined she was the criminal also, or the suspected person who was really innocent, or the stupid policeman who made all the mistakes, or any other of the familiar characters… it was so easy, and so fascinating, to climb on the moors and lie down and imagine things.

On the afternoon of Christmas Day, 1910, Livia entered the drawing- room just in time to catch Mr. Felsby inveighing against “any man who makes a proposal of that kind”. In truth, there was nothing particularly mysterious about the words, since they referred to the wickedness of the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Lloyd George, who was still bent on increasing taxes), but from force of habit Emily shot the old man a warning look, whereat Richard assumed his glassiest Christmas smile and reached out his less arthritic hand. Livia then allowed herself to be patted on the head as usual; but later, while Mr. Felsby enjoyed his usual nap, she pondered alone in the downstairs room which was her own whenever Miss Fortescue was away, since it was there that she received lessons, played quiet games, and felt entrenched in extra-special privacy. She was still pondering, with a book on her knee, when she overheard something else—her mother telephoning from the hall outside. Without any intention to eavesdrop at first, she gathered it was a trunk call from London, and after that she listened deliberately. The talk continued, with long pauses and a lowering of her mother’s voice in short staccato replies; at last she heard her end up—“I can’t hear you—yes—no—I still can’t hear you—I’ll write… yes, I’ll think about it… yes, dear, happy Christmas to you too… Goodbye…” Livia then put aside her book and abandoned herself to wondering who ‘dear’ was and what ‘it’ was that her mother had promised to think about; and suddenly, as she speculated, an idea came that she instantly labelled as absurd, yet instantly allowed to take possession of her; supposing ‘it’ had been a proposal of marriage? Doubtless the remark of Mr. Felsby’s she had overheard was really responsible; anyhow, during the next few minutes the idea became a perfectly tenable theory, and by the time her mother called her to tea the theory had developed into a near-certainty, strengthened by the absence of any comment about the telephone call. It would have been natural, Livia thought, for her mother to say—“Guess who rang up just now?” —and because this did not happen Livia stifled her own natural impulse, which was to ask.

Presently, however, the near-certainty slipped back into a mere theory again, and then into its proper place as an absurd idea; a few guests began to arrive for the Christmas dinner, and the whole thing passed out of mind till it was revived hours later by a remark of Mr. Felsby’s about something else altogether—he was discussing the state of the cotton trade and trying to be seasonably cheerful about it. “There’s only one thing I can say, Whiteside—booms come after slumps just as slumps come after booms.”

Dr. Whiteside, who wasn’t particularly interested in the cotton trade, though indirectly, like any other Browdley professional man, he depended on it for the quality of his living, responded absently: “That’s about it, Richard. It’s always been the same.”

“How do you know it always WILL be the same?” Livia asked, with an air of casualness. “How do you know that this time it isn’t different?”

Every eye was turned on a girl of eleven who could put such a question; Dr. Whiteside blinked quizzically, and after a rather awkward pause Mr. Felsby cleared his throat and snorted: “Never you mind. You’ll know what we mean when you grow up.”

All at once Livia became really interested, but with a far-away rapt look that drew even more curious stares around the table. “But I know what you mean NOW,” she said quietly. “And I don’t think it’s right.”

Richard Felsby snorted again, then gave a cross look to Emily, as if this were all her fault for not bringing up the child to have better manners; while Emily, with her own typical gesture of helplessness, began to expostulate: “Now, Livia dear, how CAN you contradict Mr. Felsby?”

“Nothing’s ever just the same,” Livia repeated, cryptically and with the utmost adult solemnity. She had an odd feeling of being actually adult at that moment, of being carried along by an emotion that grew with its own momentum—as if she were dramatizing something in a rather marvellous extempore way. The drama she had constructed that afternoon was now an even bigger one in which she heard herself speaking lines as if they were being dictated by some inner yet half-random compulsion.

“Livia dear—what on earth do you mean?”

“Nothing can be just the same, even if it does happen again. It can’t, mother.” Gradually, inexorably, the words moved to the vital point of attack, and her eyes flashed as she challenged the other eyes across the table —no, across the footlights that she had read about and imagined, but so far never seen. She knew she was acting, yet she could have vowed that her emotion was not wholly counterfeit.

“But—Livia—whatever’s the matter? Has anything upset you?”

“Nothing, mother, except that… Oh, how could you even THINK of such a thing?… after being married to father…”

And at that moment she really meant it; the man whom she did not remember was now more than a ghost, he was at last a holy ghost, in his daughter’s imagination.

A short time afterwards Livia, weeping and exhausted in her bedroom, gave way to equally sincere remorse. She knew that the strange scene had spoilt the evening, that it had distressed her mother, embarrassed Dr. Whiteside, infuriated Mr.