‘It must be so, mustn’t it?’ she had said.

She had been expressing some view, as usual putting a better construction upon things than anyone else, and then she had turned to him and said ‘It must be so, mustn’t it?’ and he had seen in her eyes for the first time that question which he now recognized as underlying so much of her being. It was her longing for goodness combined with the slight desperation with which sometimes, failing to find it and in spite of her wish to be clear-sighted in facing realities, she turned for reassurance to others, which he found so touching. For though she could be definite in her views, scathing in her criticisms, it was when she faltered, when her brightness was occluded by doubt, that he most adored her.

Lionel knew Bob Lilburn as a practical man, a sportsman, a good landowner. No one could have called him imaginative. Olivia would have expected more understanding than he had to give. She would have expected it because he looked like a hero; but he, Lionel, could answer her questions better than Bob could, because he could say ‘Yes, it must be so, and if it is not so I will make it so’, and because in appealing thus to one side of his nature she also appealed to the other, because her short upper lip trembled slightly as she raised her eyes to his and the impulse to crush the doubts with an abundance of kisses seemed overwhelming. He soon recognized himself as being in the grip of a tremendous passion. Small indications had made him believe she knew of it; his one object (beyond the attainment of which he did not even speculate) had become to make her admit what she knew.

★

When Cicely kissed Sambo’s nose it set up a frightful tickling around his whiskers. He blew down his nose but failed to ease the situation. He stretched out his neck to its fullest extent and drew his lips back from his yellowing teeth to make an expression like a disdainful camel’s, then as if embarrassed by the laughter this caused he lowered his head and rubbed his face against the front of Cicely’s tweed jacket, almost knocking her over.

‘Your manners, your manners,’ she expostulated.

Tibor Rakassyi had approached, smiling.

‘He is not used to being kissed by pretty young ladies.’

‘It’s a funny reaction, to make a face like a camel.’

‘If you would care to experiment I can make some very pretty faces.’

‘And you always do, when kissed on the nose?’

‘Almost always.’

‘You must look funny. How was the shooting?’

‘Perfection.’

‘Not for the pheasants, I suppose. Are you hungry? There is a delicious lunch.’

The shooters were making their way slowly into the boat-house, in twos and threes, talking. Lionel Stephens hung back, finding himself at the last minute unaccountably afraid of setting eyes upon Olivia, as if he could not be sure what might happen when he did.