They stared at each other and, curiously, the look of startled conjecture which had appeared on George Lacklander’s face was reflected on the Colonel’s. ‘It couldn’t matter less, in any case,’ the Colonel said. ‘Your informant, I am sure, is entirely mistaken. There’s no point in my staying. Goodbye.’

He went out. George, transfixed, saw him walk past the window. A sort of panic came over him. He dragged the telephone across his desk and with an unsteady hand dialled Colonel Cartarette’s number. A woman’s voice answered.

‘Kitty!’ he said. ‘Kitty, is that you?’

III

Colonel Cartarette went home by the right-of-way known as the River Path. It ran through Nunspardon from the top end of Watt’s Lane skirting the Lacklanders’ private golf course. It wound down to Bottom Bridge and up the opposite side to the Cartarettes’ spinney. From thence it crossed the lower portion of Commander Syce’s and Mr Phinn’s demesnes and rejoined Watt’s Lane just below the crest of Watt’s Hill.

The Colonel was feeling miserable. He was weighed down by his responsibility and upset by his falling out with George Lacklander who, pompous old ass though the Colonel thought him, was a lifetime friend. Worst of all he was wretchedly disturbed by the suggestion that Rose had fallen in love with Mark and by the inference, which he couldn’t help drawing, that George Lacklander had collected this information from the Colonel’s wife.

As he walked down the hillside he looked across the little valley into the gardens of Jacob’s Cottage, Uplands and Hammer Farm. There was Mr Phinn dodging about with a cat on his shoulder. ‘Like a blasted old warlock,’ thought the Colonel, who had fallen out with Mr Phinn over the trout stream, and there was poor Syce blazing away with his bow-and-arrow at his padded target. And there, at Hammer, was Kitty. With a characteristic movement of her hips she had emerged from the house in skintight velvet trousers and a flame-coloured top. Her long cigarette-holder was in her hand. She seemed to look across the valley at Nunspardon. The Colonel felt a sickening jolt under his diaphragm. ‘How I could!’ he thought (though subconsciously). ‘How I could!’ Rose was at her evening employment cutting off the deadheads in the garden. He sighed and looked up to the crest of the hill and there, plodding homewards, pushing her bicycle up Watt’s Lane, her uniform and hat appearing in gaps and vanishing behind hedges, was Nurse Kettle. ‘In Swevenings,’ thought the Colonel, ‘she crops up like a recurring decimal.’