“What, dear? We thought of looking up places at the seashore for a month later on. Just you and me and Bella, you’d like that, wouldn’t you! Do you remember that funny place in Wales we went to one time when you were a very little girl? I never could pronounce its funny name, but we had lodgings looking right out over the water, and you used to have a little bucket and spade and dig in the sand.”

“That Swiss school,” said Sabrina, looking down at her plate. “Was it a convent?”

“Why—no,” said Aunt Effie, with a glance at Father. “But it’s very odd that you should ask, because your father did say he thought convent schools sounded very pretty.”

“I was thinking it must be nice to be a nun,” said Sabrina simply, as though talking to herself.

“What?” said Father, so that Aunt Effie jumped and dropped her fork. “Now, look here, Sabrina, I won’t have any religious nonsense, do you understand? A fellow you’ve never seen goes and dies out in India and you want to be a nun! That’s nonsense. You’re going to forget all about it at once—forget this house and everything in it!”

“Really, Alan, I don’t think—”

“I don’t mean to be harsh or unreasonable,” he added more quietly, smitten by her smallness and whiteness, so motionless in her chair. “But I expect my daughter to grow up into a sane, healthy-minded woman, with the right ideas about marriage and children. There’s no reason on earth why I shouldn’t see you married to some decent fellow and safely a mother before I die.”

Sabrina stared at him in dumb incredulity. Married? To someone who wasn’t Hilary? Children—that weren’t Hilary’s? Could they never understand that she belonged to him?

“Well, I wouldn’t go as far as all that, Alan!” cried Aunt Effie, with her gay, silly laugh, and she reached to lay a protective hand on Sabrina’s, where it rested on the edge of the table. “Not necessarily, I mean! We spinsters lead the happiest lives, when all’s said and done! Fewer worries and responsibilities, I always think— though some of us have got darling nieces who make us a great deal of extra bother, haven’t we!” She patted Sabrina’s hand. “There’s certainly no need to rush her off into marriage, Alan, I assure you! She could do far worse than jog along comfortably like her old auntie!”