Suddenly Violet heard a bell tinkle. Robert at last! She glanced towards the mirror and saw that already the frightened look had vanished from her face. How silly she was to imagine things! There was doubtless some very reasonable explanation as to why he could not come earlier, but now that he was here all would be well. She must be gay and bright and amusing. Men had no use for dismal women who complained.

She patted her hair into place and gave a last look at her face in the mirror, then slipped across the room to stand in the open window looking on to the balcony. He must not think that she had been anxiously awaiting his arrival. She must appear at ease and indifferent, as if not for a second had she been perturbed or worried by his failure to arrive earlier.

She heard the door of the room open, but she did not turn her head. She heard it close and still she went on looking out to sea, knowing that she made an attractive picture in her leaf-green dress, the sun bringing out the chestnut lights in her well-arranged hair. There was a little cough.

‘Hello, Violet!’ a voice said.

She swung round, the astonishment of her expression almost ludicrous.

‘Eric! What in the world are you doing here?’

The words burst from her lips, she was so surprised. Her husband smiled deprecatingly.

‘Sorry if I startled you, old girl. I came over from Nice.’

‘Nice! Really, Eric, I could not be more astonished if a balloon had dropped down the chimney.’

‘So it appears,’ Eric Featherstone smiled, ‘but I wanted to have a talk with you.’

Violet realised they were both standing with half the width of the room between them.

‘Come and sit down,’ she said, moving towards the sofa.

As she watched him seat himself, she thought he was looking well.

Eric Featherstone had no pretentions to good looks, but he would never be mistaken for anything but what he was, an English gentleman. Six feet two in height, slightly stiff in his bearing, there was something quietly authoritative and reliable about him which made both strangers and animals trust him instinctively. He was nearly fifty and there was hardly a grey hair on his head. He had, too, the healthy weather-beaten complexion of a man who spends most of his life out of doors.

‘What can you be doing at Nice?’ Violet asked when finally they were both seated on the sofa. ‘I thought you hated the South of France.’

‘It isn’t much in my line, as you know,’ Eric replied, ‘but Uncle Harold is dead. He died about three weeks ago.’

‘Not really?’ Violet exclaimed. ‘I must have missed it in The Times. I never can remember to read the Deaths column. Fancy his being dead at last. We always thought he would live to be a hundred.’