She waved her rose at him in dismissal and held out her left hand in a gesture that he found distressingly second rate. He took it with his own left and shook it crisply.

‘Will you give your father a message from me?’ she said. ‘I know how worried he must be about your grandfather. Do tell him I wish so much one could help.’

The hand inside the glove gave his a sharp little squeeze and was withdrawn. ‘Don’t forget,’ she said.

Rose came back with the flowers in a box. Mark thought: ‘I can’t leave her like this, half-way through a proposal, damn it.’ He said coolly: ‘Come and meet your father. You don’t take enough exercise.’

‘I live in a state of almost perpetual motion,’ she rejoined, ‘and I’m not suitably shod or dressed for the river path.’

Mrs Cartarette gave a little laugh. ‘Poor Mark!’ she murmured. ‘But in any case, Rose, here comes your father.’

Colonel Cartarette had emerged from a spinney halfway down the hill and was climbing up through the rough grass below the lawn. He was followed by his spaniel, Skip, an old, obedient dog. The evening light had faded to a bleached greyness. Silvered grass, trees, lawns, flowers and the mildly curving thread of the shadowed trout stream joined in an announcement of oncoming night. Through this setting Colonel Cartarette moved as if he were an expression both of its substance and its spirit. It was as if from the remote past, through a quiet progression of dusks, his figure had come up from the valley of the Chyne.

When he saw the group by the lawn he lifted his hand in greeting. Mark went down to meet him. Rose, aware of her stepmother’s heightened curiosity, watched him with profound misgiving.

Colonel Cartarette was a native of Swevenings. His instincts were those of a countryman and he had never quite lost his air of belonging to the soil. His tastes, however, were for the arts and his talents for the conduct of government services in foreign places. This odd assortment of elements had set no particular mark upon their host. It was not until he spoke that something of his personality appeared.

‘Good evening, Mark,’ he called as soon as they were within comfortable earshot of each other. ‘My dear chap, what do you think? I’ve damned near bagged the Old ’Un.’

‘No!’ Mark shouted with appropriate enthusiasm.

‘I assure you! The Old ’Un! Below the bridge in his usual lurk, you know. I could see him …’

And as he panted up the hill the Colonel completed his classic tale of a magnificent strike, a homeric struggle and a broken cast. Mark, in spite of his own preoccupations, listened with interest. The Old ’Un was famous in Swevenings: a trout of magnitude and cunning, the despair and desire of every rod in the district.