Lucia found much to attract her in Grebe. Though it was close to the road it was not overlooked, for a thick hedge of hornbeam made a fine screen: besides, the road did not lead anywhere particular. The rooms were of good dimensions, there was a hall and dining room on the ground floor, with a broad staircase leading up to the first floor where there were two or three bedrooms and a long admirable sitting room with four windows looking across the road to the meadows and the high bank bounding the river. Beyond that lay the great empty levels of the marsh, with the hill of Tilling rising out of it half a mile away to the west. Close behind the house was the cliff which had once been the coastline before the marshes were drained and reclaimed, and this would be a rare protection against northerly and easterly winds. All these pleasant rooms looked south, and all had this open view away seawards; they had character and dignity, and at once Lucia began to see herself living here. The kitchen and offices were in a wing by themselves, and here again there was character, for the kitchen had evidently been a coach house, and still retained the big double doors appropriate to such. There had once been a road from it to the end of the kitchen garden, but with its disuse as a coach house, the road had been replaced by a broad cinder path now bordered with beds of useful vegetables.

‘Ma molto conveniente,’ said Lucia more than once, for it was now perfectly safe to talk Italian again, since the Contessa, no less than she, was determined to avoid a duet in that language. ‘Mi piace molto. E un bel giardino.’

‘How I love hearing you talk Italian,’ ejaculated Irene, ‘especially since I know it’s the very best. Will you teach it me? Oh, I am so pleased you like the house.’

‘But I am charmed with it,’ said Lucia. ‘And there’s a garage with a very nice cottage attached which will do beautifully for Cadman and Foljambe.’

She broke off suddenly, for in the fervour of her enthusiasm for the house, she had not thought about the awful catastrophe which must descend on Georgie, if she decided to live at Tilling. She had given no direct thought to him, and now for the first time she realised the cruel blow that would await him, when he came back tomorrow, all bronzed from his week at Folkestone. He had been a real Deus ex machina to her: his stroke of genius had turned a very hazardous moment into a blaze of triumph, and now she was going to plunge a dagger into his domestic heart by the news that she and therefore Cadman and therefore Foljambe were not coming back to Riseholme at all…

‘Oh, are they going to marry?’ asked Irene. ‘Or do you mean they just live together? How interesting!’