She spoke with a level voice, slowly, and there was little change of expression in her tone.
'I was twenty-seven, and no one else seemed to want to marry me.
It's true he was forty-four, and it seemed rather old, but he had a very good position, hadn't he?
I wasn't likely to get a better chance.'
Mrs Skinner felt inclined to cry again, but she remembered the party.
'Of course I see now why you took his photograph away,' she said dolefully.
'Don't, mother,' exclaimed Kathleen.
It had been taken when he was engaged to Millicent and was a very good photograph of Harold.
Mrs Skinner had always thought him quite a fine man.
He was heavily built, tall and perhaps a little too fat, but he held himself well, and his presence was imposing.
He was inclined to be bald, even then, but men did go bald very early nowadays, and he said that topees, sun-helmets, you know, were very bad for the hair.
He had a small dark moustache, and his face was deeply burned by the sun.
Of course his best feature was his eyes; they were brown and large, like Joan's.
His conversation was interesting.
Kathleen said he was pompous, but Mrs Skinner didn't think him so, she didn't mind it if a man laid down the law; and when she saw, as she very soon did, that he was attracted by Millicent she began to like him very much.
He was always very attentive to Mrs Skinner, and she listened as though she were really interested when he spoke of his district, and told her of the big game he had killed.
Kathleen said he had a pretty good opinion of himself, but Mrs Skinner came of a generation which accepted without question the good opinion that men had of themselves.
Millicent saw very soon which way the wind blew, and though she said nothing to her mother, her mother knew that if Harold asked her she was going to accept him.
Harold was slaying with some people who had been thirty years in Borneo and they spoke well of the country.
There was no reason why a woman shouldn't live there comfortably; of course the children had to come home when they were seven; but Mrs Skinner thought it unnecessary to trouble about that yet.
She asked Harold to dine, and she told him they were always in to tea.
He seemed to be at a loose end, and when his visit to his old friends was drawing to a close, she told him they would be very much pleased if he would come and spend a fortnight with them.
It was towards the end of this that Harold and Millicent became engaged.
They had a very pretty wedding, they went to Venice for their honeymoon, and then they started for the East.
Millicent wrote from various ports at which the ship touched.
She seemed happy.
'People were very nice to me at Kuala Solor/ she said.
Kuala Solor was the chief town of the state of Sembulu.
'We stayed with the Resident and eveiyone asked us to dinner.
Once or twice I heard men ask Harold to have a drink, but he refused; he said he had turned over a new leaf now he was a married man.
I didn't know why they laughed.
Mrs Gray, the Resident's wife, told me they were all so glad Harold was married.
She said it was dreadfully lonely for a bachelor on one of the outstations.
When we left Kuala Solor Mrs Gray said good-bye to me so funnily that I was quite surprised.
It was as if she was solemnly putting Harold in my charge.'
They listened to her in silence.
Kathleen never took her eyes off her sister's impassive face; but Mr Skinner stared straight in front of him at the Malay arms, krises and parangs, which hung on the wall above the sofa on which his wife sat.
'It wasn't till I went back to Kuala Solor a year and a half later, that I found out why their manner had seemed so odd.'
Millicent gave a queer little sound like the echo of a scornful laugh.
'I knew then a good deal that I hadn't known before.
Harold came to England that time in order to many.
He didn't much mind who it was.
Do you remember how we spread ourselves out to catch him, mother?
We needn't have taken so much trouble.'
'I don't know what you mean, Millicent,' said Mrs Skinner, not without acerbity, for the insinuation of scheming did not please her.
'I saw he was attracted by you.'
Millicent shrugged her heavy shoulders.
'He was a confirmed drunkard.
He used to go to bed eveiy night with a bottle of whisky and empty it before morning.
The Chief Secretary told him he'd have to resign unless he stopped drinking.