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provokingly. And she declined to reveal the fact that she had had tea with Dr. Shane Willoughby, which would have been a tid-bit of information Cathie would have appreciated. And perhaps for that very reason Linnet kept the tid-bit to herself.

 
    CHAPTER V
    In the hall Linnet and Cathie paused to examine the letter rack to see whether anything had come for them by the afternoon’s post. But nothing had. As they entered the lift Linnet was conscious of the aftermath of disappointment, for whenever she looked at the letter rack these days she had the feeling that there might—that there could be a letter for her addressed in a masculine hand hitherto unknown to her. But so far that masculine handwriting had declined to materialize before her strangely waiting eyes.
    It was exactly a fortnight since she had last seen Guy Monteith, looking a little haggard but amazingly tall and possessed of a kind of feline grace in his faultlessly tailored lounge-suit, walking out to a taxi which awaited him at the kerb. She had watched his departure from the window of her room, which was in the front of the house although high up at the top of the tall building, and which overlooked the street and the front entrance of Aston House. The taxi had been ticking over quietly at the kerb, and Major Monteith, after one apparently casual glance up at the front of the nursing-home, had got into it and been driven away, and Linnet had wondered with a queer sensation like a sudden stoppage of her breath at the base of her slender, cream-coloured throat whether she would ever see him again.
    And now, fourteen days after he had driven away, she had the feeling that she would either hear from him or that she would never hear from him again. It was absurd, of course, but he had said he would be away a fortnight, and he had told her that he would get in touch with her the very night he was back. He had even asked her to have dinner with him, quite overlooking the fact that she might be on duty.
    But tonight—the fourteenth night—she was not on duty ...
    “I’m going to have a lazy evening for a change,” Cathie told her, as they parted company outside her room. “I’m going to simply soak in a bath with some new and horribly expensive bath essence I’ve just acquired, and then I’m going to grit my teeth and get on with some jobs of mending which, if I ignore them any longer, will leave me without a stitch of underwear to put on.” She grimaced. “So think of me, won’t you, darling? And if you feel like dropping in for a cosy chat about nine o’clock I’ll be ready to welcome you and regale you with tea.”
    Just as Linnet was moving on she called her back.
    “By the way, our lovely Diana was in high form this afternoon ... ! Someone had sent her masses of flowers—the most exotic blooms!—and she just can’t think whom she’s got to thank for them. There was no card. She’s thrilled to bits.”
    “Oh!” Linnet exclaimed.
    “Of course, a woman like that is bound to have rather an exciting background, and possibly quite a few lovers, all waiting for her to recover from this little lot. And our Adrian has forbidden visitors for the time being, except Sir Paul, who looked in yesterday. But with the tender message of dark red roses before her eyes ... Well, what do, you think of it, my sweet? Don’t you wish you were a seductive widow!”
    Linnet, when she reached her room, decided to go through her own stocking drawer and discover how much attention her nylons needed, and as she went through pair after pair, she thought of Diana Carey. She hadn’t known that Dr. Shane Willoughby had forbidden visitors, but even in the face of such a ban Diana bore up bravely. The one visit she looked forward to was that of Dr. Shane Willoughby himself, and for that she always insisted on looking what she called her “poor best”. This meant that she had all her make-up aids brought to her, even if his visit was late in the evening—which once or