CHAPTER 32Cicely drove up the dark Lane. She drove slowly, because now that she was clear of Abbottsleigh she was not quite ready to arrive at Deepside. She had wanted to get away before the parents came home, she didn’t want to meet them. But she didn’t know how she was going to meet Grant—and, as a stupid anticlimax, Mrs. Barton. However much you would like to conduct your private affairs in a vacuum, the domestic hearth is full of eyes, the spot you live in is full of ears, especially if it is a village. Relations and friends expect to have things explained to them, and if you have a housekeeper you have at least to tell her where you are going to sleep.
Cicely crawled up the Lane, fortifying herself. Her own thoughts left no room for what otherwise might have been the macabre suggesti
