Sir Randolph gently lowered Tom onto his former pillow. The faces turned to the doctor, who approached, and knelt, and put his ear to Tom’s chest and looked at Sir Randolph and shook his head.

Cicely walked rapidly across the field. She had turned away just as Doctor West knelt down. Tibor followed her.

She seemed to him a frail figure, walking so determinedly in front of him, both hands holding her skirt as she crossed the long damp grass towards the gate which led on to the road. Poor little creature, he thought, she should never have been allowed to see that. He caught up with her, and taking one of her small gloved hands in his tucked it into his arm.

‘I am so sorry. I should have insisted that you came away.’

‘Why?’ She was pale but not tearful.

‘Such a scene is not suitable for a young girl.’

‘As a matter of fact,’ said Cicely, speaking rather distinctly. ‘There is nothing that is not suitable for a young girl.’

‘Nothing?’

‘Nothing. Not even murder.’

‘Ah, come now. This was an accident.’

‘Accidental murder then.’

They walked a little way in silence. This was not quite the mood Tibor had expected.

‘Unfortunately it does sometimes happen,’ he said.

‘It has never happened here.’

‘No? Well then, you have been fortunate. I have known it elsewhere, I assure you. Of course it’s more often a case of wounding.’

‘Grandfather will never forgive Lord Hartlip.’

‘It could have happened to anyone. It was very bad luck.’

She continued to walk rather fast in silence. It appeared that she was angry, rather than shocked or distressed as he had anticipated.

‘Come, Cicely,’ he said in expiation. ‘He was only a peasant.’

There was another silence. She gave a long trembling sigh. Then she said softly, ‘Yes, he was only a peasant. But we all knew him, you see.’

Tibor felt that he had not been adequate to the occasion, but if he could not gauge her mood how could he meet it? He had expected tears and had been ready with a strong supporting arm and a monogrammed handkerchief; now, puzzled, he would have liked to change the subject altogether but felt it was a little soon after the event. They continued their silent progress until, reaching the gate which led onto the road, he held it open for her and said, looking at her a little pathetically, ‘Why don’t we talk, just quite quietly, about how you will come and visit me in Hungary?’

She paused, one hand on the gate, and then she sighed again, and then she looked him full in the face with a bright, eloquent, warm, inexplicable gaze, and said, ‘Oh I think I shall never visit you in Hungary.’

There was another shooting party at Nettleby, of course. The late November shoot, already organized, duly took place. The guests were different, the birds were plentiful, the weather though much colder was dry and bright. No one enjoyed it as much as usual; even for those who had not been there when it happened the shadow of the accident fell over the day. For the rest of the season Sir Randolph went out only with a few neighbours, or with Harry Stamp and his grandson Marcus. By the time the next season came round a bigger shooting party had begun, in Flanders.