If you try and hush a thing up all sorts of rumours get about which are ten times worse than the truth.'
'They told the Bishop in Singapore that Harold had killed himself while he was suffering from delirium tremens.
I think for all our sakes you ought to deny that, Millicent.'
'It's such a dreadful thing to have said about anyone who's dead,' said Mrs Skinner.
'And it'll be so bad for Joan when she grows up.'
'But what is the foundation of this story, Millicent?' asked her father.
'Harold was always very abstemious.'
'Here,' said the widow.
'Did he drink?'
'Like a fish.'
The answer was so unexpected, and the tone so sardonic, that all three of them were startled.
'Millicent, how can you talk like that of your husband when he's dead?' cried her mother, clasping her neatly gloved hands.
'I can't understand you.
You've been so strange since you came back.
I could never have believed that a girl of mine could take her husband's death like that.'
'Never mind about that, mother,' said Mr Skinner.
'We can go into all that later.'
He walked to the window and looked out at the sunny little garden, and then walked back into the room.
He took his pince-nez out of his pocket, and though he had no intention of putting them on, wiped them with his handkerchief.
Millicent looked at him and in her eyes, unmistakably, was a look of irony which was quite cynical.
Mr Skinner was vexed.
He had finished his week's work and he was a free man till Monday morning.
Though he had told his wife that this garden-party was a great nuisance and he would much sooner have tea quietly in his own garden, he had been looking forward to it.
He did not care very much about Chinese missions, but it would be interesting to meet the Bishop.
And now this!
It was not the kind of thing he cared to be mixed up in; it was most unpleasant to be told on a sudden that his son-in-law was a drunkard and a suicide.
Millicent was thoughtfully smoothing her white cuffs.
Her coolness irritated him; but instead of addressing her he spoke to his younger daughter.
'Why don't you sit down, Kathleen?
Surely there are plenty of chairs in the room.'
Kathleen drew forward a chair and without a word seated herself.
Mr Skinner stopped in front of Millicent and faced her.
'Of course I see why you told us Harold had died of fever.
I think it was a mistake, because that sort of thing is bound to come out sooner or later.
I don't know how far what the Bishop has told the Heywoods coincides with the facts, but if you will take my advice you will tell us everything as circumstantially as you can, then we can see.
We can't hope that it will go no further now that Canon Heywood and Gladys know.
In a place like this people are bound to talk.
It will make it easier for all of us if we at all events know the exact truth.'
Mrs Skinner and Kathleen thought he put the matter very well.
They waited for Millicent's reply.
She had listened with an impassive face; that sudden flush had disappeared and it was once more, as usual, pasty and sallow.
'I don't think you'll much like the truth if I tell it you,' she said.
'You must know that you can count on our sympathy and understanding,' said Kathleen gravely.
Millicent gave her a glance and the shadow of a smile flickered across her set mouth.
She looked slowly at the three of them.
Mrs Skinner had an uneasy impression that she looked at them as though they were mannequins at a dressmaker's.
She seemed to live in a different world from theirs and to have no connexion with them.
'You know, I wasn't in love with Harold when I married him,' she said reflectively.
Mrs Skinner was on the point of making an exclamation when a rapid gesture of her husband, barely indicated, but after so many years of married life perfectly significant, stopped her.
Millicent went on.