very last moment before leaving town and with her well-known fortitude
and consideration for the feelings of others, had sent her maid on to
assure her husband that he need not be anxious. That would clearly be
Mrs Quantock's suggestion, for Mrs Quantock's mind, devoted as it was
now to the study of Christian Science, and the determination to deny
the existence of pain, disease and death as regards herself, was always
full of the gloomiest views as regards her friends, and on the
slightest excuse, pictured that they, poor blind things, were suffering
from false claims. Indeed, given that the fly had already arrived at
The Hurst, and that its arrival had at this moment been seen by or
reported to Daisy Quantock, the chances were vastly in favour of that
lady's having already started in to give Mrs Lucas absent treatment.
Very likely Georgie Pillson had also seen the anticlimax of the fly's
arrival, but he would hazard a much more probable though erroneous
solution of her absence. He would certainly guess that she had sent on
her maid with her luggage to the station in order to take a seat for
her, while she herself, oblivious of the passage of time, was spending
her last half hour in contemplation of the Italian masterpieces at the
National Gallery, or the Greek bronzes at the British Museum. Certainly
she would not be at the Royal Academy, for the culture of Riseholme,
led by herself, rejected as valueless all artistic efforts later than
the death of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and a great deal of what went before.
Her husband with his firm grasp of the obvious, on the other hand,
would be disappointingly capable even before her maid confirmed his
conjecture, of concluding that she had merely walked from the station.

The motive, then, that made her send her cab on, though subconsciously
generated, soon penetrated into her consciousness, and these guesses at
what other people would think when they saw it arrive without her,
sprang from the dramatic element that formed so large a part of her