‘Evidently he has heard that Georgie is here,’ thought Elizabeth to herself as she hurried into the house. ‘Dear me, how men quarrel with each other, and I only want to be on good terms with everybody. No doubt he wants to know if I’m going to the house-warming – Good morning, Major Benjy.’

‘Thought I wouldn’t come out,’ said this bluff fellow, ‘as I heard your Miss Milliner Michael-Angelo, ha, was with you –’

‘Oh Major Benjy, fie!’ said Elizabeth. ‘Cruel of you.’

‘Well, leave it at that. Now about this party tomorrow. I think I shall make a stand straight away, for I’m not going to spend the whole of the winter evenings tramping through the mud to Grebe. To be sure it’s dinner this time, which makes a difference.’

Elizabeth found that she longed to see what Lucia had made of Grebe, and what she had made of her speech from the window.

‘I quite agree in principle,’ she said, ‘but a house-warming, you know. Perhaps it wouldn’t be kind to refuse. Besides, Georgie –’

‘Eh?’ said the Major.

‘Mr Pillson, I mean,’ said Elizabeth, hastily correcting herself, ‘has offered to drive us both down.’

‘And back?’ asked he suspiciously.

‘Of course. So just for once, shall we?’

‘Very good. But none of those after-dinner musicals, or lessons in bridge for me.’

‘Oh, Major Benjy!’ said Elizabeth. ‘How can you talk so? As if poor Lucia would attempt to teach you bridge.’

This could be taken in two ways, one interpretation would read that he was incapable of learning, the other that Lucia was incapable of teaching. He took the more obvious one.

‘Upon my soul she did, at the last game I had with her,’ said he. ‘Laid out the last three tricks and told me how to play them. Beyond a joke. Well, I won’t keep you from your dressmaker.’

‘O fie!’ said Elizabeth again. ‘Au reservoir.’

Lucia, meantime, had driven back to Grebe with that mocking voice still ringing in her ears, and a series of most unpleasant images, like some diabolical film, displaying themselves before her inward eye. Most probably Elizabeth had seen her when she called out to Georgie like that, and was intentionally insulting her. Such conduct called for immediate reprisals and she must presently begin to think these out. But the alternative, possible though not probable, that Elizabeth had not seen her, was infinitely more wounding, for it implied that Georgie was guilty of treacheries too black to bear looking at. Privately, when she herself was not present, he was on Christian-name terms with that woman, and permitted and enjoyed her obvious mimicry of herself. And what was Georgie doing popping in to Mallards like this, and being scolded in baby-voice for ringing the bell instead of letting himself in, with allusions of an absolutely unmistakable kind to that episode about the chain? Did they laugh over that together: did Georgie poke fun at his oldest friend behind her back? Lucia positively writhed at the thought. In any case, whether or not he was guilty of this monstrous infidelity, he must be in the habit of going into Mallards, and now she remembered that he had his paintbox in his hand. Clearly then he was going there to paint, and in all their talks when he so constantly told her what he had been doing, he had never breathed a word of that. Perhaps he was painting Elizabeth, for in this winter weather he could never be painting in the garden. Just now too, when she called at Mallards Cottage, and they had had a talk together, he had refused to go out and drive with her, because he had some little jobs to do indoors, and the moment he had got rid of her – no less than that – he had hurried off to Mallards with his paintbox. With all this evidence, things looked very dark indeed, and the worst and most wounding of these two alternatives began to assume probability.