"If you like, dear," replied an unguarded Aliette. But when the door closed and she lay alone in darkness, her mind reverted to its problem, to that peculiar omission of Ronald Cavendish's name. 4 Morning broke to gusts of rain. Hector locked himself in the library; the admiral inspected his greenhouses; Mollie refused to get up; and Aliette wrote letters. Somehow, the letters took a long while to write. She found herself, pen in raised hand, dreaming. In her day-dreams happiness and dissatisfaction mingled incoherently, as the voices of two people heard through a wall. She could not catch the words of the voices, only the tones of them: one low-laughing, the other querulous. For the first time since girlhood--and even in girlhood she had been deliberate--deliberate thought abandoned her. She felt content that her mind should drift idly through an idle day. Only when Mollie--appearing brogued and tweeded for luncheon--reminded her of the agreed church-going, did her brain resume its normal function. "In all probability I shall see Ronald Cavendish"--the thought came startlingly as Aliette watched Hector at work on the inevitable roast beef and Yorkshire pudding of the admiral's Sabbath. "I hope I shall see Ronald Cavendish"--so distinct were the words that they might have been actually spoken. "It's clearing up," announced her father-in-law. "You'll have a jolly walk. Ought to start about half-past three. Better have some tea at the Bull. Service is at half-past five." "I don't think I'll go," said Aliette. "I've got rather a headache." "Do your headache good," rumbled the admiral. She pulled herself together. Why shouldn't she go to Key Hatch; why shouldn't she meet Ronald Cavendish? Not, of course, that she really _wanted_ to meet Ronald Cavendish. . . . 5 "I wonder why on earth I invented that headache," thought Aliette, as she and Mollie tramped down the drive. Hector had returned to work in the library; he waved them au revoir from the desk by the window. A fantasy came to her: "I shall never see Hector again." She said to herself: "I hope _he_ hasn't gone back to town." She said to herself: "Aliette, don't be an absolute idiot." For, after all, could anything be more idiotic than that a woman of nearly thirty--and that woman Mrs. Brunton, Mrs. Hector Brunton, wife of Hector Brunton, K.C.--should feel like--like a schoolgirl going to meet her first choir-boy?