"Yes. Miss Hetherington insists on that. Much of the produce comes from the Abbey gardens."
"Carrying on the old monastic traditions. Ah, traditions, Miss Grant. How they rule the lives of people like us. Do sit down. There ... opposite me so that I can see you. I always enjoy there intimate dinner parties more than those in the great hall. This, of course is only big enough for four at the most, but two is more suitable."
It was a charming room, oak-panelled with a painted ceiling on which fat cupids disported on fleecy clouds while an angel looked benignly on.
He saw me looking at it.
"It provides quite a celestial atmosphere, don't you think?"
I looked at him and the thought struck me that he was like Lucifer shut out of heaven. That seemed ridiculous and fanciful and far from the point. I was sure he would never allow himself to be shut out of any place he wanted to be in.
"Yes," I said. "It does. Although what cupids are doing up in the clouds, I am not sure."
"Looking for an unwary heart to pierce with the arrows of love."
"They would need a very sure aim if they planned to strike someone on earth ... even if the clouds are low-lying."
"You have a practical mind, Miss Grant, and I like that. Ah, here comes the soup. I trust it will be to your liking."
A discreet manservant was carrying in a tureen from which he served us. Then he produced a bottle of wine and poured it into the glasses.
"I hope also that you will approve of the wine," said Jason. Verringer. "I chose it specially. It is of a vintage year ... one of the best of the century."
"You should not take such pains on my account," I replied. "I am not a connoisseur and cannot really appreciate it."
"Didn't they teach appreciation of good wine at that very select school in Switzerland? I am surprised. You should have gone to that one in France ... I forget its name. I am sure the knowledge of wine would have come into their curriculum."
He tasted the wine and raised his eyes to the ceiling with an expression of mock ecstasy.
"Very fine," he said. "Your health, Miss Grant, and that of the girl upstairs."
I drank with him.
"And to us," he added. "You ... myself ... and our growing friendship which has begun in rather dramatic circumstances."
I took another sip and put down my glass.
He went on: "You must admit that all three occasions of our meeting have been unusual. First a hold-up in a narrow lane; then you are lost and I come to your rescue; and now this affair of the runaway horse, which has led to our being here together."
"Perhaps you are the sort of person to whom dramatic things happen."
He considered that. "I suppose something dramatic happens to most people now and then in their lifetimes. What of you?"
I was silent. My thoughts had gone back to that meeting in the forest and my uncanny-as it now seemed-encounter with a man who, according to a tombstone in Suffolk, had been long since dead. Strangely enough, this man, whose most outstanding quality was his vitality and firm grip on life, was reminding me more vividly of my strange experience than I had been for some time now.
He leaned forward. "I seem to have awakened memories."
He had a way of penetrating my thoughts which I found disconcerting.
"As I was involved in those events which you call dramatic, I suppose you would say I had experienced them too. Drama, like everything else, is in the mind of those who take part in it. I don't think I see those incidents-apart from what happened to Teresa-as dramatic."
"Do have some more soup."
"No, thanks. It was delicious, but I am too concerned about Teresa to give your food the attention it deserves."
"Perhaps at some later time you will make up for your neglect."
I laughed and he signed for the butler to bring in the duckling.
He asked about his nieces and how I thought the Academy was benefiting them. Out of loyalty to Daisy, I assured him that the benefits were great.
"Fiona is a quiet girl," he said. "She takes after her mother. But quiet people are sometimes deceptive. Out of your vast experience you will know that."
"I have learned that we know very little about anybody. There are always surprises in the human character. People say so and so acted out of character. That is not really so. They have acted according to some part of their character which they have not hitherto shown to the world."
"That's true. So we can expect Fiona one day to surprise us all."
"Perhaps."
"Eugenie not so, because nothing she did would surprise me very much. Would it you, Miss Grant?"
"Eugenie is a girl whose character is as yet unformed. She is ready to be influenced. She is-rather unfortunately-by a girl named Charlotte Mackay."
"I know her. She has been here for holidays. I also know her father."
"Charlotte is very anxious that no one should forget she is an Honourable when it would be so much more becoming if she sought to conceal the fact."
"Do you approve of concealment, Miss Grant?" "In certain circumstances."
He nodded slowly and attempted to fill my glass. I put my hand over it to prevent his doing so for I was sure he would have filled it even though I declined.
"You are very abstemious."
"Shall we say unused to drinking a great deal." "A little afraid that those excellent wits might become a little befuddled?"
"I shall make sure that they do not."
He filled his own glass.
"Tell me about your home," he said.
"Are you really interested?"
"Very."
"There is very little of interest. My parents died. They were missionaries in Africa."
"Do you share their piety?"
"I'm afraid not."
"One would have thought that parents who were missionaries would have produced offspring eager to carry on the good work."
"On the contrary. My parents believed ardently in what they did. Although I was very young when I left them, I realized that. It was goodness in a way. They suffered hardship. In fact they died for their beliefs in the end, you might say. I suppose that is the supreme sacrifice. Then I came home to a beloved aunt and I saw a different sort of goodness. If I were able to emulate the goodness of one or the other I would choose that of my aunt."
"Your voice changes when you speak of her. You are very fond of this aunt."
I nodded. There were tears in my eyes and I was ashamed of them. Disliking him as I did, he yet had the power to play on my emotions. I was not sure what it was-the words he used, the inflections of his voice, the expression in his eyes. Oddly enough I felt there was something rather sad about him, which was absurd. He was arrogant in the extreme, seeing himself more than life size, the master of many, and wanting to prove himself to be the master of all.
"I was sent to live with her," I continued, "and that was the best thing that ever happened to me ... or ever will, I imagine."
He lifted his glass and said: "I will make a prophecy. Things as good are going to happen to you. Tell me about your aunt."
"She ran a school. It didn't pay. I was going to work with her. But she had to sell up so I came here." "Where is she now?"
"In a little house in the country. She has a friend who lives with her. I shall go to her as soon as school breaks up."
He nodded. "It seems to me, Miss Grant," he said, "that you are a very fortunate young lady. You have been to that place in Switzerland when your aunt was more affluent-or did your parents leave you well provided for?"
"Everything they had went into their mission. It was my aunt who sent me to the school She could ill afford it, I am sure, but she insisted on my going and she kept me there. And that ... made it easy for me to come here."
"Miss Hetherington talks of little else but your talents and the Schaffenbruckenization of her school."