Lynn took the bills and glanced through them. There were no records of extravagance amongst them. They were for slates replaced on the roof, the mending of fences; replacement of a worn-out kitchen boiler - a new main water pipe. They amounted to a considerable sum.

Mrs Marchmont said piteously:

"I suppose I ought to move from here. But where could I go? There isn't a small house anywhere - there just isn't such a thing. Oh, I don't want to worry you with all this, Lynn. Not just as soon as you've come home. But I don't know what to do. I really don't."

Lynn looked at her mother. She was over sixty. She had never been a very strong woman. During the war she had taken in evacuees from London, had cooked and cleaned for them, had worked with the W.V.S., made jam, helped with school meals. She had worked fourteen hours a day in contrast to a pleasant easy life before the war. She was now, as Lynn saw, very near a breakdown. Tired out and frightened of the future.

A slow quiet anger rose in Lynn. She said slowly:

"Couldn't this Rosaleen - help?"

Mrs Marchmont flushed.

"We've no right to anything - anything at all."

Lynn demurred.

"I think you've a moral right. Uncle Gordon always helped."

Mrs Marchmont shook her head. She said:

"It wouldn't be very nice, dear, to ask favours - not of someone one doesn't like very much. And anyway that brother of hers would never let her give away a penny!"

And she added, heroism giving place to pure female cattiness: "If he really is her brother, that is to say!"

Chapter 2

Frances Cloade looked thoughtfully across the dinner table at her husband.

Frances was forty-eight. She was one of those lean greyhound women who look well in tweeds. There was a rather arrogant ravaged beauty about her face which had no make-up except a little carelessly applied lipstick. Jeremy Cloade was a spare grey-haired man of sixty-three, with a dry expressionless face. It was, this evening, even more expressionless than usual.

His wife registered the fact with a swift flashing glance.

A fifteen year-old girl shuffled round the table, handing the dishes. Her agonised gaze was fixed on Frances. If Frances frowned, she nearly dropped something, a look of approval set her beaming.

It was noted enviously in Warmsley Vale that if any one had servants it would be Frances Cloade. She did not bribe them with extravagant wages, and she was exacting as to performance - but her warm approval of endeavour and her infectious energy and drive made of domestic service something creative and personal.

She had been so used to being waited on all her life that she took it for granted without self-consciousness, and she had the same

appreciation of a good cook or a good parlour-maid as she would have had for a good pianist.

Frances Cloade had been the only daughter of Lord Edward Trenton, who had trained his horses in the neighbourhood of Warmsley Heath. Lord Edward's final bankruptcy was realised by those in the know to be a merciful escape from worse things. There had been rumours of horses that had signally failed to stay at unexpected moments, other rumours of inquiries by the Stewards of the Jockey Club. But Lord Edward had escaped with his reputation only lightly tarnished and had reached an arrangement with his creditors which permitted him to live exceedingly comfortably in the South of France. And for these unexpected blessings he had to thank the shrewdness and special exertions of his solicitor, Jeremy Cloade. Cloade had done a good deal more than a solicitor usually does for a client, and had even advanced guarantees of his own. He had made it clear that he had a deep admiration for Frances Trenton, and in due course, when her father's affairs had been satisfactorily wound up, Frances became Mrs Jeremy Cloade.