Very gently he tried to explain things to her. Afterwards Magda
overheard the family lawyer asking him in appropriately shocked tones of
what complaint Lady Vallincourt had died, and there had been a curious
grim twist to Lancaster's mouth as he made answer.

"Heart," he said tersely.

"Ah! Very sad. Very sad indeed," rejoined the lawyer feelingly. "These
heart complaints are very obscure sometimes, I believe?"

"Sometimes," said Lancaster. "Not always."



The next happening that impressed itself on Magda's cognisance as an
event was the coming of Lady Arabella Winter. She arrived on a day of
heavy snow, and Magda's first impression of her, as she came into the
hall muffled up to the tip of her patrician nose in a magnificent sable
wrap, was of a small, alert-eyed bird huddled into its nest.

But when the newcomer had laid aside her furs Magda's impression
qualified itself. Lady Arabella was not in the least of the "small
bird" type, but rather suggested a hawk endowed with a grim sense
of humour--quick and decisive in movement, with eyes that held an
incalculable wisdom and laughed a thought cynically because they saw so
clearly.

Her hair was perfectly white, as white as the snow outside, but her
complexion was soft and fine-grained as that of a girl of sixteen--pink