In the face of the muddle he himself had made in his efforts to find the missing notes, this was more unreasonable than ever. Elizabeth choked down another retort.

“All right. You come and look. Do, Stephen!”

He came unwillingly, and unlocked the chest.

“It’s perfectly ridiculous,” he said. “I shouldn’t be such a fool as to forget that I put them here. You seem to have a very poor opinion of my— Oh!” He lifted the notes out of the chest and scowled mightily.

Wonderfully innocent, Elizabeth said,

“Perhaps one of the maids did it. I’ll speak to them about it.”

Stephen looked around at her sharply; she maintained an air of guileless gravity. Stephen’s lips quivered; a twinkle came into his eyes; he began to laugh. Elizabeth laughed too, and at last Stephen said,

“Oh, ’Lisbeth, I am a bad-tempered swine! I’m awfully sorry.”

Elizabeth thought, How right Mrs. Gabriel was! What a fool I used to be!

Chapter Twenty-Nine

A month slipped by; Stephen said that it was time they thought about Christmas. What would Elizabeth like to do? Elizabeth did not know; she would do what Stephen wanted. They stayed at this deadlock until a rambling letter came from Mrs. Ramsay, inviting them to spend Christmas with her, if they had nothing better to do.

“Oh, let’s do that!” Elizabeth said. “I want to see Mater again.”

She feared Cynthia’s presence at the flat, but Cynthia had gone with Anthony to his parents, in Norfolk. She was relieved out of all proportion.

“Darling,” said Mrs. Ramsay, “I’ve asked ever so many people to dinner, but I can’t remember who, or how many. Isn’t it trying? Stephen, whom do you suppose I asked?”

“Colonel Lambert and Bertha Tarrant,” Stephen said promptly.

“So I did,” Mrs. Ramsay agreed. “Oh, and Mr. and Mrs. Fletcher. Elizabeth, Thomas nearly seized the turkey this morning. Wasn’t it awful? You’re in disgrace, aren’t you, my angel?”

Thomas grinned widely and flattened his ears.

The party was a merry one, and Mrs. Ramsay more than usually amusing. The Tyrells were present, wilder than ever, and to Elizabeth just as incomprehensible. She thought them mad, and sometimes improper, but Stephen’s eyes twinkled at her across the table, and she was able to tolerate the Tyrells. Stephen understood her feelings; that was a bond between them which made things easier to bear.

After Christmas they returned to the Halt, and this time it was Elizabeth who chafed to he in the country again. As soon as Stephen completed a chapter of his hook she typed it, and gradually her interest in the work grew till it was almost as if the book were her own.

Quite unconsciously she was helping him. She went to him once with a sheet of his manuscript, and pointed out a word.

“Stephen, is that ‘crude’ or ‘coarse’?”

He looked at it, then at her.