Part Five: Dinah

“Oh, Bracken knows.”

“What?” said Archie, startled.

“Bracken will have something all worked out for us, you’ll see! He doesn’t believe in all this nonsense about money either.”

“I say, Virginia—apart from everything else, you know, and even if you did have to wring it from me—I have been hopeless about you ever since the fancy-dress ball!”

“Then why did you have to go on treating me like grim death and let me go home to America without a word?” she demanded. “I very nearly never came back to England again!”

“Well, I thought that would be all for the best, you know.”

“You didn’t care if you broke my heart!”

“My dear girl, such a thing never occurred to me! Besides—” He stopped.

“Well, what?”

“There was Edward. I knew he had so much more to offer you than I had, and I knew he was frightfully gone on you himself, and it wasn’t my place to go barging in—”

“Archie, did you think I cared about the old title?” She glanced around cautiously, for you never knew if some gardener mightn’t come in to nurse

the roses and overhear. The greenhouse was empty, except for themselves.

Virginia drew closer to him and locked her arms around his waist, a way she had always demonstrated affection for Bracken, who had learned to brace his diaphragm against it. It took the wind out of Archie. “I wouldn’t marry Edward if he was the Prince of Wales!” she said extravagantly.

“Oh, well, in that case—” said Archie, recovering, and a gardener did come in then, and backed out again, and they never heard him 5

A marriage will take place early in June at St. Margaret’s, Westminster, between Mr. Mortimer Flood of Belgrave Square and Lady Clare Campion, elder daughter of the Earl of Enstone… .

Once more the house in St. James’s Square was stiff with powdered footmen in blue livery and silk stockings, and little crowds gathered on the pavement near the door to watch dinner guests in evening dress alight from their carriages in the summer twilight. Dinah was to be one of the bridesmaids and as her presence was required in Town for fittings for her bridesmaid’s dress, she and Bracken lost their week-end rides for the less satisfactory meetings which could be arranged in London. Eden and Virginia, who were not coming up till just in time for the wedding, remained at Farthingale entertaining some friends of Cabot’s who had come to stay, so Bracken and Dinah had to take Miss French with them when they went to matinees and picture galleries and the Zoo. Once she let them walk in the Park for an hour while she was at the dentist’s, and once she accompanied Dinah to tea at his chambers in Ryder Street, which was not much more than round the corner from St. James’s Square.

Bracken noticed with relief that Dinah’s clothes had evolved from the intermediate schoolgirl length and pattern to a style more suitable for a very young lady, now that she was allowed to wear Clare’s hand-me-downs.

Clare’s things were of course twice too big for her, but Miss French was clever at altering them to fit, or more often making a whole new dress out of two of Clare’s old ones. Bracken would have been very much touched if he had known how the gentle little woman contrived and laboured to dress her darling so that the rich American who was so kind-hearted would be sure to see the wind-flower beauty which clumsy clothes might have

obscured. Miss French in her deep secret heart was deliberately match-making. She had taken Bracken’s measure long ago, and she wanted him for Dinah, who had not mentioned the existence of his wife. Miss French never allowed a hint of this daring ambition to cross Dinah’s mind. But she noticed with satisfaction the way Bracken’s eyes lingered on the girl in her charge, and her hopes grew daily and were stitched into every garment she worked at. She was glad too that the sewing-maid’s time was occupied with Clare, for she was jealous of her own devoted part in Dinah’s new grown-up look.

It was a season when everyone wore a bit of lace or chiffon tied around the neck with a filmy bow beneath the chin—an extravagant whimsy, because the perishable bows could be worn only once and often would not bear laundering. Dinah did not suspect that her chiffoneries had come out of Miss French’s own money, as well as the shiny black braid lovingly sewn on by hand in a complicated scroll down the front of the overskirt of the blue and tan polonaise frock which they put together from two of Clare’s. It wasn’t everyone who could wear the trying polonaise or princesse style, which required a faultless carriage and form. Miss French knew that Dinah, hopelessly thin by Clare’s robust standard of beauty, would soon have the fashionable Lent lily figure—what the French call fausse maigre, and which could wear anything.

Besides the blue polonaise, Dinah had for best an embroidered white voile with rose-coloured ribbons and a fitted lace jacket, and the gossamer bow under her chin was always of an indescribable freshness, because it was made of the finest materials Miss French could buy. Dinah supposed that the money for these fragile accessories came of an interview Miss French had had with the Earl before they left the Hall. Only Miss French knew, indignantly, how grudging and insufficient Lord Enstone’s response to her request had been—barely enough to provide what had to go underneath. Hats were the most difficult of all, because Clare had not had very many to start with. But Archie got wind of this problem and contributed a pound, which was spent for a fresh wing and some ribbon, and Dinah, who discovered she liked learning to sew, achieved a very fair copy of a model in The Queen. To go on with the voile they dressed up a discarded white brimmed shape of Clare’s with tulle rosettes and one of her presentation feathers dyed pink.

Bracken perceived that Dinah regarded Miss French now as a friend rather than as a governess, and so he took notice of her in his easy way, which enslaved the dear soul still further. She began to feel that she simply couldn’t bear it if, when her time came to go on to the next family—a spectre that lurks at every governess’s elbow—she couldn’t see Dinah safely into the care of the light-hearted, open-handed, understanding gentleman from New York. Miss French had her own opinion of Clare’s choice, but it didn’t trouble her much for she had never liked Clare, even in the schoolroom. She considered, with a defiant lack of charity, that Clare deserved Mortimer Flood. But to see Dinah sacrificed to a similiar marriage de convenance would, she was sure, half kill her.

Victoria celebrated her eightieth birthday that summer at Windsor, and Flying Fox, the favourite, won the Derby, and at The Hague the Peace Conference was sitting—delegates from twenty-five Sovereign States of the civilized world, convened to discuss “the mitigation, at least, if not the abolition of war.” The humours of the deliberations were somewhat grim, as when one of the Committees solemnly ruled by a large majority that the dum-dum bullet must be prohibited. In other quarters the opinion was expressed that the only practical guarantee of peace was the perfection of engines of destruction, and that a submarine boat which could blow up whole fleets with impunity would make maritime nations far more amiable to each other than any veto upon armaments. And Bracken wrote an article for the Star based on the assertion that the Conference would do better to concern itself, not with the conduct of war, but with its causes.

He had scarcely been surprised to learn that Lisl had by now disappeared from Biarritz with Serrano, making it impossible to serve the papers.

Spurred on by Bracken’s language, Partridge in an effort to save time applied to the judge in chambers for substitute service, and this was finally granted. Feeling that now they were getting some place, Bracken had a gala dinner at his club with a bottle of wine, all by himself, and wrote the news to his Cousin Sally at Cannes.

Within the week, near the end of a rather trying day at the Fleet Street office, Bracken’s secretary came in and, carefully concealing his own surprise, said that a lady who gave her name as Mrs. Murray was waiting to see him. As Bracken described it later to Eden, the bottom dropped out of his stomach and Lisl walked in at the door.

He looked at her silently across the room, conscious of a faint surprise that she was really so beautiful, except—he had noticed it before—her nose was a little too sharp. She was tall, with a magnificent figure which managed not to seem heavy. She was dressed as always somewhat lavishly with a great deal of lace and ribbon and feathers. But whereas during the time she had lived as his wife in New York it had been in the best of a deliberately ornate taste, now it was sheer low Parisian gaudiness. She was dressed, he found himself thinking in that electric moment before either of them spoke, like a fairly high-class madam. Always sleek and confident to the point of felinity, she had now a subtle additional insolence, daring him.

And while the familiar, exotic scent she had always used eddied towards him, there was something about her that he missed, without at first defining it. Then he realized that she wasn’t wearing any diamonds. He saw with a still further and separate surprise that even her ears, which had always been pierced for earrings, were bare of ornament.

“It’s not a ghost, Bracken,” she said, and he heard again with renewed aversion the slurred r in his name as she spoke it with the old mocking affection and the same clever smile, as though she had read your thoughts and found them indecorous. “You do not see things. It is Lisl. Have you forgotten already?”

He had come slowly to his feet behind the desk, making no gesture of greeting, no effort to return the smile.

“We have been looking for you,” he said grimly.

“So? Well, I have turned up, like the penny. But perhaps I interrupt? I can wait. You take me to dinner, yes?”

“No,” he said bluntly. “If this is absolutely necessary let’s get it over.”

And he indicated the visitor’s chair beside his desk.

“Ah, but how good it is to see one of your towering tempers again!” she sighed. “And I am dying for one of your cigarettes, too.”

He noticed as she took it from his proffered case that her gloves were not clean. She had never used to wear a pair but once. He knew that his silence made it difficult for her, and did not speak. When he had held the match she sank gracefully into the chair, and he resumed his own and waited.

“There is no one in the world who can be angry as well as you can, Bracken,” she remarked, two little jets of smoke coming out of her thin

nostrils. Her curving painted lips left a mark on the cigarette. “Even in a rage you are always a gentleman. This is an art I can appreciate. But you had many arts, Bracken.” Her smile was knowing and intimate, her eyes met his boldly.

“I haven’t time now to hear about my accomplishments,” he said. “You must have something more important on your mind. Let’s come to the point.”

“Ah, yes, you have the right to be angry,” she conceded graciously. “But you were always big-hearted, Bracken. You always forgave me.”

“I’ve had time to change,” he reminded her briefly.

“You have had time to fall in love again, yes?”

“You rather cured me of that, Lisl.”

She leaned forward, watching him.

“There is no one? In all this time?”

“Why should you care?”

“I do care. Because now I know what I threw away.”

“Bit late, isn’t it?” And then, as she was silent, watching him through the smoke of the cigarette as she had used to do, he added with an edge of impatience, “Why have you come here? What do you want?”

“Perhaps not quite what you think. You would never love me again, would you—not the way it was, though that is something to remember, yes?

—but you could be kind, Bracken, as always you were, even when I was wicked. I know now how wrong I was. I am sorry. Let me come back I will be good.”

His incredulous surprise was so intense that it was like a clock ticking in the silent room, while he stared at her. He forced himself to answer sanely a thing he could hardly believe he had heard at all.

“That’s impossible,” he said, and found his lips were stiff.

“I shan’t be any trouble to you now. Bracken—I tell you the truth. It is over with Hutchinson. Long ago. Since then I keep selling things to live—

what I got from him, what I had from you—till now it is all gone. Lately I do not live very well. I have time to think—to remember—to regret. I come back to you. I wear sackcloth and ashes, but I am still your wife.”

“That is all over too,” he said. “And you are not, I think, telling the whole truth. Try again. What really happened?”

She paused to scrutinize him, her eyes full of the open appraisal she gave all men. She thought how well he looked, how fresh—how desirable.

His lean, fine hands, so completely in repose, even now, under stress—his lean, long body, so at ease in its chair, so perfectly conditioned—his quiet, expensive clothes, worn with such casualness, his general air of unconcerned well-being—money did that for a man. Money—and love of a woman, to give him that ingrained indifference to all women but the one.

She revised her plans a little.

“Well, you will get it out of me,” she shrugged. “I make a clean breast.

Hutchinson became impossible with his jealous rages. He was a dull man, Bracken, not like you, and clumsy—” Her wide, unembarrassed gaze slid from his eyes to his lips, ran over the breadth of his shoulders, rested on his hands, so that for the first time he stirred uncomfortably and felt the nerves at the back of his neck crisp with disgust. “He was noisy, and he bored me, and he made threats—it was so that I had no friends—I had to have peace—

I had to save myself. So there was a man from the Argentine—young, handsome, so amusing—not rich—but very in love with me. I went with him.”

“Mm-hm. Then what?”

“Wherever we went, Hutchinson came. I do not know how he did it, he bought detectives, I think. Always he followed. He did nothing, he was just there, and he watched. We tried everything to lose him. No. Finally it got on poor Jorge’s nerves. He could not stand the watching. Even behind a locked door, Jorge could feel him—watching. So now Jorge is gone. With him go my jewels. I have nothing. I make a mistake in Jorge, you see.”

“I see. And why not go back to Hutchinson instead of me?”

“I am afraid.”

He laughed.

“You aren’t afraid of the devil!”

“That was once, maybe. Now I have been ill. I have been lonely and sad.

I think of you all the time. I am penitent. I come home.”

“No, I’m afraid you don’t do anything of the kind,” he said quietly. “I’m through, Lisl. You know that.”

If she had raged at him in the old way now, if she had tried to browbeat him, he could have hated her in the old way and been done with it. But when she began to wheedle, he felt a little sick.

“I don’t think you quite understand, Bracken. I come on my knees to you. I was foolish. I was wicked. I was mad. Not now. Ah, Bracken, I make no nuisance of myself, I promise. I ask no questions, I make no claims. I know I have no right to these things any more. I ask very little, really—

yes?” Watching him narrowly, she shifted her attack once more. “Well, then, if not under your roof—you have, perhaps, a little ménage?—then a simple place somewhere of my own, here in England where one feels so safe. You can afford that, yes? You will not miss the money—say, twenty thousand pounds? And so I make no trouble.”

“So that’s it,” he said, beginning to see.

“You would not like it to be known here in London that your wife is in want?” she suggested softly, with her curving smile, almost as though she spoke words of love. “You would not like to have your wife go on the streets here—yes?”

With his eyes holding hers, he reached for the telephone and called Partridge’s number.

“I have here in my office,” he said clearly into the mouthpiece when Partridge answered, “a woman calling herself my wife who is unfortunately still entitled to use my name. She has just put it to me that if I give her twenty thousand pounds it will be unnecessary for her to go on the streets.

Is that blackmail or isn’t it?”

“Well, no, not quite,” said Partridge cautiously. “Oh, dear, I’m afraid we shall have to cope with that. But you must not make appointments to see her alone—”

“I made no appointment to see her and I am not inclined to call in the office-boy as chaperon,” Bracken cut in. “She is here. What do I do now?”

“Get her address, first of all. Has she a lawyer?”

“Shouldn’t think so.”

“Tell her I will see her here tomorrow at three. Make it seem as though we were considering the payment of at least part of her demand. You are not to be present. Get rid of her now as fast as you can, and don’t see her again.”

“That’s easy to say,” said Bracken.

“And I had better see you before I see her.”

“Dine with me, then. Seven o’clock tonight, at the club.”

Partridge promised to be there, and Bracken hung up. He asked Lisl for her address, and wrote down the number in a dingy Bloomsbury street.

“Lodgings?” he asked.

“Yes. Not very nice ones.”

“You’ll find my lawyer in the Middle Temple,” he said, handing her the name and address on a slip of paper. “Go to see him there tomorrow at three. He secured evidence at Biarritz for divorce, which I intend to use as soon as possible. I will of course make some provision for your support.”

He rose and crossed the room to the door. “I have an engagement now.

Please excuse me.” He stood with his hand on the doorknob, waiting.

For a moment he thought she would not go. She sat looking at him from across the room, and her eyes had gone cold and unwinking, like a cobra’s.

Even without the mention of divorce, there was something in the look of him as he stood there by the door, the man she had once possessed with all his young ardour and loyalty, that told her quite plainly that now he belonged to someone else. It was not just that his love for her was ended.

Somehow in his easy, confident carriage in the face of her proposals, in his added maturity, in his cool aloofness which could afford courtesy instead of anger, she read his love for someone else. But it was not Bracken she hated for that. It was the other woman.

She rose and walked towards him slowly, with her long, feline step, and he opened the door to the clatter of the outer office where a dozen people were at work.

“I shall find out who she is,” she said, looking into his eyes, and went.

Bracken more or less felt his way back to his chair and sat for a while, staring blindly at the top of the desk where the pad lay with the Bloomsbury address written on it. Then he tore off the top page, put it into his coat pocket, took his hat and left the office.

Outside a fine drizzle was falling, and the air was warm and heavy.

Bracken walked westward, unaware, along Fleet Street and the Strand, his hat still in his hand because he had forgotten to put it on. People glanced twice at his white face as he passed, crossing-sweepers paused to stare after him, cabbies pulled up sharply to miss him by inches, a policeman put out a hand and saved him from going under a brewer’s team—he was unaware.

Somewhere inside him a hammer was pounding— let me come back— I am

still your wife— I am penitent— you can afford that, yes? — I shall find out who she is—I SHALL FIND OUT WHO SHE IS….

Westward along the Strand he walked in the drizzle, past Charing Cross, into Pall Mall, through the corner of St. James’s Square to King Street—

bare-headed, unseeing, homing by instinct till he came to Ryder Street.

Meakins, his manservant, opened the door to him, saying words still madder than anything he had heard from Lisl—

“Lady Dinah has been waiting half an hour, sir.”

“Here?”

“In the drawing room, sir. Might I suggest that you change your coat, sir? It’s raining.”

Bracken gave Meakins his hat, passed a hand across his hair, and turned silently towards the closed drawing room door.

“I beg your pardon, sir, but you hadn’t ordered dinner for tonight. Shall I

—?”

“No. I’m dining out. Not dressing. You may go.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Bracken opened the drawing room door. Dinah was sittting in a corner of the divan, looking frightened.

6

THE afternoon had begun badly in St. James’s Square.

Miss French had one of her headaches and was lying down. Clare was having a luncheon for her bridesmaids, but the two youngest, Dinah and the younger Miss Norton-Leigh, were not expected to come because they weren’t out yet, and therefore were considered only one degree higher than the flower-girl, who was seven years old. Evelyn Norton-Leigh was only fifteen, and gushed. Dinah disliked her, and felt degraded to be paired with her.

Alone in the schoolroom at the top of the house, waiting for her luncheon tray to come up, Dinah set her music boxes out in a row and began to play them one by one. She had just got to the newest one, with its life-like trilling bird, when a voice behind her said, “Boo! You never thought you’d see me today, did you! Oh, what’s that? Let me see!”

Dinah’s hand had gone behind her instinctively as she whirled to face Evelyn Norton-Leigh, whose idea of a joke was always to creep up on one unexpectedly. Evelyn made a grab and caught her wrist and snatched the silver box out of her fingers.

“It’s a music box! Oh, what fun, how does it work?”

“Give it back, Evelyn, you’ll break it!”

“No, I won’t, how do you start it? Oh, how marvellous!” By accident Evelyn’s thumb had found the catch and the bird came up and began to whistle.

“Please, Evelyn, I’m always terrified he’ll get caught! Let me have it!”

“Oh, look, you’ve got lots of them! Is that one gold? I never saw these before, where did you get them? Let’s play them all!”

“I’d rather not,” said Dinah desperately. “I don’t play them very often, I just—hadn’t anything else to do. Luncheon will be up in a minute. Are you going to stay?”

“Yes, all afternoon, isn’t that marvellous?” Evelyn had set one of the other boxes tinkling. Then, still holding the silver one recklessly at an angle so that the flap which covered the grid hung ajar and all the works were upside down, she went on down the line till she had them all going—one for each Christmas and birthday and the bird was extra. “Oh, but none of them is as adorable as the bird!” she cried, and pressed the catch again.

“Look, he even moves his wings and his beak when he sings!”

Dinah tried again to capture the box in Evelyn’s hand, but Evelyn dodged out of reach, and since her consuming desire was to be one of the whispering, laughing group of older girls downstairs she seized the first excuse.

“I must show this one to Rosalind! The girls will simply love it! I made Rosalind let me come along to have lunch with you today for a surprise, and I’m so glad, I never dreamed you had anything as lovely as this!”

“No, Evelyn, please don’t take it down there, I’d much rather you didn’t

—” Dinah followed helplessly to the top of the stairs, but Evelyn had already reached the flight below and scampered on, Dinah reluctantly at her heels. “It will run down, Evelyn, please give it back to me—”

They arrived breathless at the drawing room door and Evelyn had all the other girls around her instantly, exclaiming over the whistling bird.

“Where did you get it?” Clare was asking, and Evelyn said carelessly,

“It’s Dinah’s. Hadn’t you seen it?”

“Where did you get it, Dinah?” said Clare, and the other girls, sensing tension, all turned to look at Dinah who had paused in the doorway.

“Bracken gave it to me.”

“Bracken Murray?” squealed Evelyn’s sister Rosalind. “That good-looking American? Well, I must say, Dinah, you do fly high!”

“Did he give you all the rest of them too?” demanded Evelyn. “She has lots more upstairs, there’s even a gold one, but I like this the best. Fancy you not knowing, Clare, she tried to hide it from me too!”

Clare took the silver box out of Evelyn’s hand.

“How long have you had this, Dinah?”

“He brought it back from America. It’s just a gift.”

Clare was looking at her coldly. Clare had had no gifts from Bracken, except a wedding present, but he seemed determined to spoil Dinah and turn her head. Or was it possible that he—Old jealousy stirred in Clare, and

—

“Luncheon is served, my lady,” said a powdered footman into the ominous silence.

“You and Evelyn run along upstairs, Dinah. I’ll keep the music box, I want to show it to Edward.”

“Oh, please, Clare, it belongs to me! Bracken gave it to me—”

“Rather too expensive a gift, I’m afraid. We’ll see what Edward says.

Now run along, you two, I’ll send for you later.”

Nearly all the music boxes had run down when they got back to the schoolroom. Dinah wouldn’t allow them to be wound up again, but put them away in a cupboard and made Evelyn sit down to lunch.

“Well, I’m sorry if I made trouble,” Evelyn remarked, obviously not sorry a bit. “But how was I to know you had secrets with Bracken Murray!”

“Oh, shut up, Evelyn, it wasn’t a secret, it started as a sort of joke at Hamley’s when I was a child, and he’s just gone on sending them. I never thought what they cost, and I don’t suppose he did either, he’s got lots of money.”

“Whatever happened between him and Clare? Rosalind was sure Clare was going to land him once!”

“Perhaps he just wasn’t in love with her.”

“Me-ow! ” said Evelyn, and laughed maliciously. “Well, I’d a lot rather have him than Mortimer Flood, and I bet Clare would too! Honestly, how she can! But I do think it would be very exciting to be kissed by Bracken Murray, don’t you?”

“Is that all you think of when you see a man?” Dinah asked sarcastically.

“Well, not all!” Evelyn giggled. “Bracken Murray is nice and thin, I’d hate a soft man, wouldn’t you? I wonder who’s going to get him finally?

You’d better hurry up and come out, if you were fixed up a little, who knows! Some men like very young girls, and if he’s given you all these presents it must mean something!”

“Oh, do stop it, Evelyn, he’s known me ever since I was fifteen! Tears stood in Dinah’s eyes. “He’s always been very kind to me, and we’re friends, that’s all, and I hope we always will be.”

“Do you let him hold your hand?”

“No! I mean, such a thing would never occur to him! And I think this is a perfectly beastly conversation and it’s time we changed the subject!”

“Why, I do believe you’re blushing!” Evelyn cried, eyeing her cruelly.

“My goodness, Dinah, it’s nothing to be ashamed of, I’d be wildly in love with him if he ever so much as looked at me! Those shoulders! And I like clean-shaven men, don’t you, not so scratchy! Dinah, you are blushing, are you going to try to make him fall in love with you?”

“I wouldn’t dream of such a thing and neither would he,” said Dinah steadily, but her palms were wet. “Have you been for another fitting? How do you think the hats are going to look? Mine is too big—”

She had no sooner got rid of Evelyn, who stayed for tea, than a footman came up to say that his lordship would like to see her in the library.

This meant Edward, because their father was still in the country—Lord Enstone hated London and had announced firmly that he would come up for the day of the wedding and give away the bride and would return to Gloucestershire the day after, and they could just get on with it. As she descended on the left of the curving double staircase which led down to the black-and-white marble tiled hall, Dinah was wishing that it had been her father instead of Edward. Lord Enstone was an indifferent disciplinarian and always got bored immediately after an interview began and one was likely to get off lightly because anything else was too much trouble. But Edward took himself seriously and behaved with pompous severity when

one was called on the carpet by him. It came of having to handle all the people on the farms and so on. He was inclined to treat everybody like a recalcitrant tenant who made a habit of leaky roofs. Dinah resented being bullied, and it always made her feel like fighting back, which wouldn’t do, and so she was forced to take refuge in a blank-faced docility much more infuriating to her brother than tears or temper would have been.

Alwyn was sitting behind the sumptuous Empire desk with its green blotter and silver inkstand when Dinah entered the library. The music box was in front of him, the bird invisible and mute.

Dinah closed the door behind her and approached the desk slowly, struggling for courage. Her hands were damp and cold, her knees shook, her tongue was dry. If he tried to take the music box away from her she was going to make a scene. It was hers. It was part of the collection.

“Sit down, Dinah,” said Alwyn, glancing up at her without a smile, and fixing his gaze again on the box while she crept silently into a chair at the end of the desk facing him. “How long has this been going on?”

“The music boxes? He bought one at Hamley’s for my sixteenth birthday. That was the first.”

“How many has he given you?”

“One for each birthday and Christmas since then—and this one.”

“But surely you realize a thing like this is much too valuable a gift for you to accept from him!”

“Well, I—he said about the first one that it didn’t matter what it cost.

This one was a—just a gift from America. I knew he had a lot of money—”

“Whether he can afford it or not is not the point. He’s a married man, you know that. I told you myself.”

“He says—eventually there will be a divorce and—he will be free to marry again.”

“And you’re fool enough to believe that? Now, once and for all, Dinah, I won’t have you mucking about with a married man! It would spoil your chances to make a good marriage like Clare’s, for one thing.”

“I don’t want to make a marriage like Clare’s.”

“You could do worse, you know. Besides, you’ll never have Clare’s looks, you might as well make up your mind to that! In any case, this Murray business is finished, do you understand? You will return the music boxes to him, all of them, at once.”

“B-but what could I say, he—”

“Say? You know damn’ well what to say! Tell him I have forbidden you to keep them, if you like.”

Dinah was trembling all over now, so that she was afraid he would see.

“Oh, but, Edward, it’s not like that at all, I can’t think why you—”

“I suppose he’s made love to you?” He turned his stone-grey eyes on her, took note of her chalky face and the hands that twisted together in her lap till the knuckles stood out. “Just like his cheek to take advantage of you!

I suppose you’ve let him kiss you. What about the governess? Is she in on this too, or just a fool? Where do you see him? In the woods? Have you ever been to his chambers here in Town? Well, answer me!” And because she was silent and kept her eyes on her locked hands in her lap, he feared the worst. “Speak up, now, and tell me what’s going on here. Or shall I shake the truth out of him?”

“No, no, don’t ever dare speak to him!” Dinah was on her feet, and her voice rose in the high, quiet room. “I shall die of shame if you say anything like this to him! I’m so humiliated to think my own brother could say such things, or think such things about a man like Bracken! You’re vile, Edward, vile and nasty, to suggest there’s anything going on between Bracken and me! We’re friends, don’t you know there is such a thing? He’s good and kind and gentle, and he has a sense of humour and we laugh— you wouldn’t know why we laugh—all you can think of is beastliness and filth! You aren’t fit to black Bracken’s boots, and if you do say any of this to his face I only hope he knocks you down!” She snatched the silver box from the desk in front of him and made for the door.

“One minute, I haven’t finished yet!” His voice snapped after her, and she leaned against the inside of the door, sick and sobbing, clinging to the knob. “Clare says it will spoil the looks of her wedding if you aren’t present,” her brother’s hard, well-modulated tones went on. “The day after the ceremony, however, you will return to the Gloucestershire house and stay there incomunicado, until you come to your senses. You will leave all the music boxes here and I’ll have them packed and returned to him. In the meantime, I shall engage a new governess. Miss French has been lax, to say the least. Ask her to come down, I want to talk to her.”

“She’s lying down with a headache.”

“I can’t help that, I want this thing settled without delay. Tell her I’m waiting.”

While Miss French was taking her turn in the library, Dinah wrote a note to leave on the schoolroom mantelpiece:

DEAR MISS FRENCH—

They’re sending me back to Gloucestershire the day after the wedding and I must see Bracken once more, so I am going round to his chambers now to wait. It’s nearly time for him to come back from the office. It they ask for me while I am away, please say that I have gone to bed and try to keep them out. He’ll walk home with me, so I shall be quite all right, even if it should be after dark. Please help me, I must try and make him understand what has happened. It will be difficult for any sane person to believe.

DINAH

Then she put on the hat with the brave little wing, and slipped out of the house and round the corner to Ryder Street. It was beginning to drizzle and she had brought no umbrella, so she ran for the doorway and arrived there quite breathless. Bracken’s man, about to depart for his evening off, let her in with barely concealed surprise and invited her to wait in the drawing room, as Mr. Murray wouldn’t be long now.

7

DINAH stood up as Bracken closed the door behind him, but her natural impulse to take refuge in his arms were blurred and frustrated by Alwyn’s accusations. So she stayed where she was, across the room from him, and stammered.

“Oh, Bracken, I know I s-shouldn’t have come here like this, p-please don’t be angry with me, I had to see you!”

“Angry? Of course not, you’re upset about something. What is it?” He came to her and took both her hands, felt how clammy they were and enclosed them comfortingly in his. But Dinah, confused and self-conscious for the first time, snatched them away and retreated to the other side of the

divan, which brought Bracken very sharply into focus for he saw that something really serious had happened to her.

“I’ve had the most awful time with Edward,” she was saying almost inaudibly. “I d-don’t know how to tell you, but they suddenly discovered the music boxes, and then everybody went mad, I think.”

“Discovered them?” he repeated, at sea.

“Miss French knew I had them, and so did Archie. But Clare and Edward didn’t. Clare said they were too expensive for me to keep, and—

and then Edward sent for me to the library, and—said the most horrible things—about us—about you and me.” At that point, realizing that she had come to Bracken’s chambers after all, and was alone with him there, shaken in her confidence of what such a thing might mean, and still aware of the warmth of his hands which had briefly taken hers, Dinah felt colour flaming up in her face and hid it from him with a gasp of shame.

The clock ticked noticeably before Bracken spoke.

“What did Edward say?” he asked her quietly, refraining with an effort from any movement towards her.

“I can’t—I’d rather not—”

“Tell me what he said, Dinah. You’ll feel better if you do. You know we can always say what we like to each other, why should you mind?”

With her back to him, she began haltingly—

“He said it was too valuable a gift for me to accept—”

“Perhaps I should have thought of that myself. What else?”

“He—he said he wouldn’t have me m-mucking about with a married man—because it would spoil my chances to make a good m-marriage—”

“Anything else?”

“He said I must return all the music boxes to you, and—and—”

“Come on, Dinah, let’s have it all.”

“He thought you’d been making love to me. He asked if—if you’d kissed me—”

“You answered him on that, I hope!”

“But you had! That morning on the hill when you came back—”

“Oh, Lord!”

“He seemed to think—to think I had come here to your rooms—alone—

and now I have!”

“I’m very glad you have, too. Come and sit down quietly and let’s get this straightened out.”

Dinah looked at him, where he stood motionless by main force across the room, and at the divan beside him. Waves of embarrassment and shock eddied through her, complicated by Evelyn’s frank remarks about him as a man. Dinah sat down on the edge of the nearest chair.

Full of pity and understanding, choosing every word and move with the greatest caution, Bracken perched casually on the arm of the rejected divan and said, without heat, “I’d like to knock Edward’s head off, first of all.”

“He’s going to sack Miss French and send me back to Gloucestershire with a new governess directly after the wedding. This was my only chance to see you and explain—” She choked.

“Well, it isn’t the way I wanted to say this,” he began easily from the arm of the divan, “but I guess the time has come. We have got the evidence and a grant of substitute service, and my divorce is going through, I think.

So if you’ll just be patient and put up with Edward a little longer, I can ask you to marry me. Will that help?”

“Me?” said Dinah, on the mearest breath of sound. “Ask— me—to—?”

“Well, who else would I be asking, hm?” he asked sensibly.

“But—that morning on the hill when I said would you marry again and you said you hoped so—was that me?”

“It was.”

“I—never even—”

“I’m probably breaking all the laws of the Kingdom to mention it, and of course we shall have to wait out the decree nisi. But anyway now I shan’t have any this-is-so-sudden nonsense out of you, shall I? You’ll have had a chance to get used to the idea gradually. And how does it strike you—as an idea?”

“Oh, yes, Bracken, but—I just can’t—believe—”

“Why on earth are you so surprised? I’ve done everything I could to let you know!”

“I thought we were just friends. I—you haven’t done anything—I mean, you’ve never—m-made love to me—”

“I’ve been a little handicapped.” Without rising from the divan, he held out his arms. “Shall I begin now?”

For the first time since he had come in, Dinah smiled. He stood up carefully, and waited where he was while she came to him across the room, and then caught her close, for he could not have borne it another moment if she had not come.

“Bracken, your coat is sopping! You’ll catch cold!”

“What? Oh—coat. Yes, I walked home. It is a bit damp, isn’t it. You stay right here—don’t move—I’ll change it.”

He was gone only a minute. When he returned shrugging into a coat from another suit which did not quite match his trousers, she was sitting in the corner of the divan again and the look she gave him was full of confidence and expectation. He sat down beside her, found the pin and took off her hat as though he had done the same thing a good many times before.

With his arm around her shoulders she settled back against him with the utmost simplicity, saying, “How long will it have to be, Bracken? What does decree nisi mean?”

“Means I daren’t move hand or foot for six months for fear of the Queen’s Proctor.”

“Who is he?”

“His job is to snoop round and see if he can catch me making love to somebody else before the divorce becomes final. If he can, he has the power to call the whole thing off. It’s all very complicated, but the whole idea is to discourage everyone from even attempting to get a divorce.”

Dinah counted on her fingers.

“But if you get the decree thingummy tomorrow it would last till Christmas!” she cried in dismay.

“And I shan’t get it tomorrow. Not for weeks yet. It’s probably just as well, because you’re much too young to decide like this. Suppose in five years’ time when you’ve seen something of the world some fellow should turn up that you like better than me?”

“There isn’t any such fellow.”

“I sincerely hope there isn’t.” His arm tightened. “But it is a risk, you know.”

“I wasn’t going to marry at all, no matter what they said. But with you it will be all right,” she said contentedly, her cheek pressed against the rough tweed of his coat.

“I shouldn’t wonder if all girls feel sometimes that they’d rather not marry,” he said thoughtfully. “I certainly wouldn’t blame them if they did.

But most of them seem to outgrow it without my help.”

“You’re quite wrong, Bracken, all the girls I know are dying to know what it’s like. I get very embarrassed sometimes, at the things they say.

Only this afternoon Evelyn Norton-Leigh was talking about you and she said—” Dinah stopped suddenly on the brink of the abyss. But now, instead of blushing, she only wanted to laugh.

“About me. Do I know her?”

“Rosalind’s sister. She’s only fifteen.”

“Mm-hm. What did she say about me?”

Dinah shifted against his shoulder so that she could look up at him. She still wanted to laugh, now that she was here with him, so safe and so usual, and the events of the afternoon had already begun to seem like sheer nightmare from which he had wakened her with his voice and his reassuring presence.

“Evelyn said she thought it would be very exciting to be kissed by you,”

she reported solemnly.

“Oh, Dinah, have mercy—” He bent his head. Her lips were cool and closed and very ready. “I think I had better take you home now,” he said, and then lingered to kiss her eyes and her hair. “Shall I come in and punch Edward’s nose for him?”

But Dinah sat still, leaning against him, full of new sensations she was unwilling to part with. Her eyelids were drowsy from his lips, and she smiled. He smelled of tobacco and shaving soap and fresh air. His arms were hard and comforting, and she had a strange, floating feeling of being carried by unlimited strength, with nothing to worry about ever again.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” he whispered, awed by her acceptance of his love-making, her sublime lack of shyness or surprise.

“You feel so heavenly,” said Dinah, and she put an arm around his neck pulling herself closer to him, burying her face against his chest as naturally as a kitten makes itself comfortable in familiar hands. “I was just wishing I never had to move from here again,” she said.

He was silent, taking this in.

“Bracken.”

“Yes, sweetheart?”

“I—oh, say that again!”

He said it again.

“I just want to see Edward’s face now, that’s all!” Dinah continued.

“He’s never even thought of your wanting to marry me.”

“Yes, he has, and that’s what’s the matter with him! I told him I was going to, the night of the fancy-dress ball.”

“You did?” In her astonishment Dinah sat straight up to gaze at him. “I remember—I was on the stairs. He looked so funny, I knew you’d said something, but I never dreamed— Oh, Bracken, way back then, did you