Rose caught back her breath, her lips trembled and her eyes filled with tears. She launched herself into her father’s arms and burst into a flood of tears. ‘What’s the use,’ poor Rose sobbed, ‘of being a brave little woman? I’m not in the least brave. When Mark asked me to marry him I said I wouldn’t because of you and there I was: so miserable that when he asked me again I said I would. And now, when we’re so desperately in love, this happens. We have to do them this really frightful injury. Mark says: of course they must take it and it won’t make any difference to us, but of course it will. And how can I bear to be married to Mark and know how his people feel about you when next to Mark, my darling, darling Daddy, I love you best in the world? And his father’ – Rose wept – ‘his father says that if Mark marries me he’ll never forgive him and that they’ll do a sort of Montague and Capulet thing at us and, darling, it wouldn’t be much fun for Mark and me, would it, to be star-crossed lovers?’

‘My poor baby,’ murmured the agitated and sentimental Colonel; ‘my poor baby!’ And he administered a number of unintentionally hard thumps between his daughter’s shoulder blades.

‘It’s so many people’s happiness,’ Rose sobbed. ‘It’s all of us.’

Her father dabbed at her eyes with his own handkerchief, kissed her and put her aside. In his turn he went over to the window and looked down at Bottom Bridge, and up at the roofs of Nunspardon. There were no figures in view on the golf course.

‘You know, Rose,’ the Colonel said in a changed voice, ‘I don’t carry the whole responsibility. There is a final decision to be made and mine must rest upon it. Don’t hold out too many hopes, my darling, but I suppose there is a chance. I’ve time to get it over before I talk to Lady Lacklander and indeed I suppose I should. There’s nothing to be gained by any further delay. I’ll go now.’

He went to his desk, unlocked a drawer and took out an envelope.

Rose said: ‘Does Kitty?’

‘Oh, yes,’ the Colonel said. ‘She knows.’

‘Did you tell her, Daddy?’

The Colonel had already gone to the door. Without turning his head and with an air too casual to be convincing he said: ‘Oh, no. No. She arranged to play a round of golf with George and I imagine he elected to tell her. He’s a fearful old gas-bag is George.’

‘She’s playing now, isn’t she?’

‘Is she? Yes,’ said the Colonel; ‘I believe she is. He came to fetch her, I think. It’s good for her to get out.’

‘Yes, rather,’ Rose agreed.