The exact right words, she presently discovered, after trying various
ones about living for others, and prayer, and the peace to be found in
placing oneself unreservedly in God's hands-to meet all these words Mrs.
Wilkins had other words, incoherent and yet, for the moment at least,
till one had had more time, difficult to answer-the exact right words
were a suggestion that it would do no harm to answer the advertisement.
Non-committal. Mere inquiry. And what disturbed Mrs. Arbuthnot about
this suggestion was that she did not make it solely to comfort Mrs.
Wilkins; she made it because of her own strange longing for the
mediaeval castle.