The Spinster is a Fiction Short Story Book. I had arrived at Inley Abbey that afternoon, and was sitting at dinner with Inley and his pretty wife, whom I had not seen for five years, since the day I was his best man, when we all heard faintly the tolling of a church bell. Lady Inley shook her shoulders in a rather exaggerated shudder. "Someone dead!" said her husband. "It's a mistake to build a church in the grounds of a house", Lady Inley said in her clear, drawling soprano voice. "That noise gives me the blues". "Whom can it be for?" asked Inley. "Miss Bassett, probably", Lady Inley replied carelessly, helping herself to a bonbon from a little silver dish. Inley started. "Miss Sarah Bassett! What makes you think so?" "Oh, while you were away in town she got ill. Didn't you know?" "No", said Inley. I could see that he was moved. His dark, short face had changed suddenly, and he stopped eating his fruit. Lady Inley went on crunching the bonbon between her little white teeth with all the enjoyment of a pretty marmoset. "Influenza", she said airily. "And then pneumonia. Of course, at her age, you know By the way, what is her age, Nino?" "No idea", said Inley shortly. He was listening to the dim and monotonous sound of the church bell. Lady Inley turned to me with the childish, confidential movement which men considered one of her many charms.
