Yes, Cheveron was her rival and it was perhaps a more dangerous one than any woman could have been. Cheveron demanded of Robert his whole future. Could she be strong enough to hold him? Until this moment Violet had never doubted her power or her ultimate triumph. Now she was not sure.

Three o’clock and still Robert had not come! What could have kept him? She thought of the mornings when he had called her from the garden before she was properly awake. She found it difficult to get up early. She was usually tired after their late nights and she liked to sleep until nearly luncheon time. Robert had teased her for being a ‘lazy bones.’ and in her complete confidence in herself she had not been afraid that he would think that her sloth was due to her years.

That was the truth, of course, for as she grew older she did find things more tiring. At Robert’s age she had been able to dance all night and be riding in the Row at ten o’clock, but now she could hardly bear the sunlight on her face before midday. Why should he know that? She had made every effort to do exactly what he wished, always remembering to tease him a little by her unexpectedness, by an elusiveness which would promise a thing one moment and refuse it the next.

Invariably they had lunched together, although it had never been spoken of as a definite rule, for Violet was too clever to allow anything between them to degenerate into a monotonous custom. As luncheon time approached Robert would say,

‘If you have not a better invitation, I hope you will honour me.’

And she would smile at him and answer,

‘Just for once I will cancel my other appointments.’

Those luncheons had been such fun. Meals eaten together at the little cafés down by the harbour, meals at the big prosperous hotels at Nice, picnics when they went high up the mountains and ate with a wonderful vista of the Côte d’Azur lying far below them.

They had laughed and had been happy – happy, Violet thought, until just recently when there had been a tiny cloud on the horizon, a shadow between themselves and the sun of their happiness. Robert had been more grave, his laughter had come less spontaneously from between his lips. But Violet had thought that perhaps this new solemnity was a good thing. She imagined that he was considering asking her the question she longed to hear from his lips, and because it would be unlike him to make a proposal of marriage lightly, he was therefore in anticipation more serious and less light-hearted.

Now she knew that her judgment was at fault. Yet he had seemed so devoted, so desperately in love that she had believed not only what he had told her but what she wanted to believe with her whole heart.