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The Father said:

'I thought I saw her out of the corner of my eye in the bus after dinner. She'll be going back to her husband. It's a poor world.'

'She's a wicked devil!' Mrs Satterthwaite said.

'I've known her myself since she was nine,' Father Consett said, 'and it's little I've seen in her to hold up to the commendation of my flock.' He added: 'But maybe I'm made unjust by the shock of it.'

They climbed the stairs slowly.

Mrs Satterthwaite sat herself on the edge of a cane chair. She said:

'Well!'

She wore a black hat like a cart-wheel and her dresses appeared always to consist of a great many squares of silk that might have been thrown on to her. Since she considered that her complexion, which was matt white, had gone slightly violet from twenty years of make-up, when she was not made-up--as she never was at Lobscheid--she wore bits of puce-coloured satin ribbon stuck here and there, partly to counteract the violet of her complexion, partly to show she was not in mourning. She was very tall and extremely emaciated; her dark eyes that had beneath them dark brown thumb-marks were very tired or very indifferent by turns.