"Don't you know? Money!"

"Money?" Lynn stiffened.

"She got it all right," said David. He was smiling now the cool cruel smile that flitted his face so well.

They had been near a moment or two ago, now they were miles apart, divided by a sharp antagonism.

Lynn cried out, "Oh, no, no, no!"

He mimicked her.

"Yes, yes, yes!"

"I don't believe it! How much?"

"Five hundred pounds."

She drew her breath in sharply.

David said musingly:

"I wonder how much Frances is going to ask for? Really it's hardly safe to leave Rosaleen alone for five minutes! The poor girl doesn't know how to say no."

"Have there been - who else?"

David smiled mockingly.

"Aunt Kathie had incurred certain debts - oh, nothing much, a mere two hundred and fifty covered them - but she was afraid it might get to the doctor's ears! Since they had been occasioned by payments to mediums, he might not have been sympathetic. She didn't know, of course," added David, "that the doctor himself had applied for a loan."

Lynn said in a low voice, "What you must think of us - what you must think of us!"

Then, taking him by surprise, she turned and ran helter-skelter down the hill to the farm.

He frowned as he watched her go. She had gone to Rowley, flown there as a homing pigeon flies, and the fact disturbed him more than he cared to acknowledge.

He looked up the hill again and frowned.

"No, Frances," he said under his breath. "I think not. You've chosen a bad day," and he strode purposefully up the hill.

He went through the gate and down through the azaleas - crossed the lawn, and came quietly in through the window of the drawing-room just as Frances Cloade was saying:

"-I wish I could make it all clearer. But you see, Rosaleen, it really is frightfully difficult to explain -"

A voice from behind her said:

"Is it?"

Frances Cloade turned sharply. Unlike Adela Marchmont she had not deliberately tried to find Rosaleen alone. The sum needed was sufficiently large to make it unlikely that Rosaleen would hand it over without consulting her brother.

Actually, Frances would far rather have discussed the matter with David and Rosaleen together, than have David feel that she had tried to get money out of Rosaleen during his absence from the house.

She had not heard him come through the window, absorbed as she was in the presentation of a plausible case. The interruption startled her, and she realised also that David Hunter was, for some reason, in a particularly ugly mood.

"Oh, David," she said easily, "I'm glad you've come. I've just been telling Rosaleen. Gordon's death has left Jeremy in no end of a hole, and I'm wondering if she could possibly come to the rescue. It's like this -"

Her tongue flowed on swiftly - the large sum involved - Gordon's backing - promised verbally - Government restrictions - mortgages -