The dog, who did not know Violet and was not used to being petted, snarled and gave a quick snap very close to Violet’s face. Violet fell over backwards, but quickly picked herself up. She had gone very red but did not cry because she did not want Dan to think she was a baby.

‘If you want them to be kind,’ said Dan, ‘you have to start being kind to them when they’re very young.’

Violet nodded, and consented to go with him to see whether the hens had laid any eggs; but the episode stayed in her mind as a thoroughly unsatisfactory one, of which she felt obscurely ashamed.

Dan was to move quite soon to lodgings in Oxford. His father had been to see Sir Randolph soon after the shooting accident, and had told him that after all he would like on behalf of Dan to accept Sir Randolph’s offer. Sir Randolph had been pleased, and because he knew how hard Glass had taken that episode (as if it reflected in some way upon his management of the shoot) he guessed that it had something to do with his change of heart, but feeling that it was no concern of his did not ask further.

Glass felt that God had spoken. He, the father, had told his son to stand in the place where it was written that someone should die, and God had substituted another man so that the son should be spared. It was clear then that God had something particular in mind for the son, and Glass could not persuade himself that that something was that he should be a gamekeeper like his father before him. With a heavy heart therefore he submitted himself to God’s purpose and going to Sir Randolph said, Take him. Since everybody else considered it a great opportunity for the boy and a cause for rejoicing he kept his sorrow and forboding to himself.

Olivia and Lionel corresponded regularly until the second year of the War. They wrote about the books they had been reading and the importance of friendship, and other things of that kind. They also wrote with tender concern about each other’s hopes and fears, and about the pain of separation. Lionel was killed in October 1915 at the battle of Loos. Olivia’s letters were found among his possessions and sent in due course to his mother, who read them with displeasure. For some years she had hoped her son would marry and she resolved now to hate for ever this woman who had evidently stood in the way and so deprived her of the grandchildren who might have consoled her for the loss of her son. Grief wore down her resolution and made her more charitable: eventually she wrote to Olivia, sending her the letters, and later they met.