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Lord Boscastle placed the photograph a long way off along the table, as though he might get a less displeasing view.

“Not a very distinguished collection, I’m afraid, Humphrey. I suppose it was quite necessary for you to join them? I know it’s always easier to take the course of least resistance. I confess that I made concessions most of my life, but I think it’s probably a mistake for us to do so, shouldn’t you have thought?”

The Boscastles, Lady Muriel and I were all dining with Roy the following night. I did not see any more of him for the rest of that day, and next morning Bidwell brought me no news. Bidwell was, however, full of the preparations for the dinner. “Yes, sir. Yes, sir. It will be a bit like the old times. Mr Calvert is the only gentleman who makes me think back to the old times, sir, if you don’t mind me saying so. It will be a pleasure to wait on you tonight, I don’t mind telling you, sir.”

So far as I could tell, Roy was keeping to his rooms all day. I hesitated about intruding on him; in the end, I went down to Fenner’s for a few hours’escape. It was the Free Foresters’match. Though it was pleasant to chat and sit in the sunshine, there was nothing noteworthy about the play. Two vigorous ex-blues, neither of them batsmen of real class, were clumping the ball hard to extra cover. If one knew the game, one could immerse oneself in points of detail. There could not have been a more peaceful afternoon.

Then I felt a hand on my shoulder.

“They told me I should find you here, but I didn’t really think I should.” The voice had a dying fall; I looked round and saw the smile on Rosalind’s face, diffident, pathetic, impudent. I apologised to my companion, and walked with Rosalind round the ground.

“I wonder if I could beg a cup of tea?” she said.

I gave her tea in the pavilion; with the hearty appetite that I remembered, she munched several of the cricketers’ buns. She talked about herself and me, not yet of Roy. Her manner was still humorously plaintive, as though she were ill-used, but she had become more insistent and certain of herself. Her determination was not so far below the surface now. She had been successful in her job, and had schemed effectively for a better one. She was making a good many hundreds a year. Her eyes were not round enough, her voice not enough diminuendo, to conceal as effectively as they used that she was a shrewd and able woman. And there was another development, minor but curious. She was still prudish in her speech, still prudish when her eyes gave a shameless hint of lovemaking — but she had become remarkably profane.

She looked round the pavilion, and said: “We can’t very well talk here, can we?”

Which, since several of the Free Foresters’ team were almost touching us, seemed clear. I took her to a couple of seats in the corner of the ground: on the way, Rosalind said: “I know I oughtn’t to have interrupted you, really. But it is a long time since I saw you, Lewis, isn’t it? Did you realise it, I very nearly tracked you down that day at Boscastle?”

“It’s a good job you didn’t,” I said. “Lady Muriel was just about ready to take a stick to you.”

Rosalind swore cheerfully and grinned.

“She’s in Cambridge now, by the way,” I said.

“I knew that.”

“You’d better be careful. If you mean to marry Ralph Udal.”

“Of course I mean to marry him. Why ever do you say such horrid things?” She opened her eyes wide.

“Come off it,” I said, copying Roy’s phrase. It was years since I had been her confidant, but at a stroke we had gone back to the old terms.

“No, I shall marry Ralph, really I shall. Mind you, I’m not really in love with him. I don’t think I shall ever really fall in love again. I’m not sure that I want to. It’s pretty bloody, being too much in love, isn’t it? No, I shall settle down with Ralph all right. You just won’t know me as the vicar’s wife.”

“That’s true,” I said, and Rosalind looked ill-used.

We had just sat down under one of the chestnut trees.

“I shall settle down so that you wouldn’t believe it,” said Rosalind. “But I’m not going to fool myself. After old Roy, other men seem just a tiny little bit dull. It stands to sense that I should want to see the old thing now and again.”

“It’s dangerous,” I said.

“I’m not so bad at covering up my traces when I want to,” said Rosalind, who was only willing to think of practical dangers.

She asked, with a glow of triumph: “Do you think I oughtn’t to have come? The old thing asked me to look him up. When he wrote about me and Ralph. And he did seem rather pleased to see me last night. I really think he was a bit pleased to see me.”

She laid her hand on my arm, and said, half-guiltily, half-provocatively: “Anyway, he asked me to go to a ball with him tonight.”

“Are you going?”

“What do you think? It’s all right, I’ll see that the old gorgon doesn’t find out. I’m not going to have her exploding down in Boscastle. I won’t have Ralph upset. After all,” she grinned at me, “a husband in the hand is worth two in the bush.”

She and Roy had arranged to go to a ball at one of the smaller colleges, where none of us had close friends. I warned her that it was still a risk.

She pursed her lips. “Why do you want to stop us?” she said. “You know it might take the old thing out of himself. He’s going through one of his bad patches, isn’t he? It will do him good to have a night on the tiles.”

I could not prevent myself laughing. Under the chestnut, an expensive lingering scent pervaded the hot afternoon. There was a bead of moisture on her upper lip, but her hair was swept up in a new, a rakish, a startling Empire coiffure. I asked when she had had time to equip herself like the Queen of the May.

“When do you think?” said Rosalind with lurking satisfaction. “I went up to town first thing this morning and told my hairdresser that she’d got to do her damnedest. The idiot knows me, of course, and when she’d finished she said with a soppy smile that she hoped my fiancé would like it. I nearly asked her why she thought I should care what my fiancé thinks of it. It’s what my young man thinks of it that I’m interested in.”

What was going through her head, I wondered, as I walked back across Parker’s Piece? She was reckless, but she was also practical. If need be, she would marry Ralph Udal without much heartbreak and without repining. But need it be? I was ready to bet that, in the last few hours, she had asked herself that question. I should be surprised if she was in a hurry to fix the date of her wedding.

As I was dressing for dinner, Roy threw open my bedroom door. His white tie was accurately tied, his hair smooth, but I was thrown into alarm at the sight of him. His eyes were lit up.

I was frightened, but in a few minutes I discovered that this had been only a minor outrage. It came as a respite. I even laughed from relief when I found how he had broken out. But I felt that he was on the edge of sheer catastrophe. It could not be far away: perhaps only a few hours. His smile was brilliant, but frantic and bitter; his voice was louder than usual, and a laugh rang out with reedy harshness. The laugh made my pulses throb in tense dismay. This fearful excitement must break soon.