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patched with damp stains. A jug stood inside a grated larder window. She wondered if his servants took care of him. He was the sort of man who would make his own coffee, with a machine, on the breakfast-table. Yes, he would have good coffee, thought Monica, her competence reassuringly asserting itself as he ushered her into a bare, flagged passage and then into a brightly furnished drawing-room.

‘The dining-room is opposite,’ he said, there are six bedrooms upstairs. I am going to turn two into a big study and get a view. It’s too God-forsaken to sit here with nothing to look out at except that grass-plot.—Here is a comfortable chair. My man will bring us some tea.’

‘Tea? Oh, no, thanks, it’s far too early;—I must get back for tea.’—He did take things for granted.—‘If you look at the room, and not out of the window, it’s rather nice in here, all the and same.’

‘It’s not bad, is it? Norah helped me with it. Big chairs and cheerful colours, and the latest things in art.’

On the walls indeed there hung some very vigorous landscapes, and on the mantelpiece were two or three carved animals that reminded Monica of those that Hester domiciled.