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drew in a deep breath of the sweet air before walking slowly down to the water’s edge, gazing at the lights across the lake twinkling like a thousand glowworms.
    She sat on a convenient bench wondering idly what the people in the houses could be doing at such an hour. Watching television, doing the last household chores of the day, perhaps even preparing to have an early night? She was startled out of her private thoughts by a slight sound and turning her head, she discovered Rex Fitzpaine had joined her and was standing rolling himself a cigarette.
    The hand which had involuntarily grasped the arm of the bench unclenched. ‘You must walk very quietly. I thought I’d got the garden to myself.’
    Rex lit the cigarette before he replied. ‘I’m sorry if I alarmed you. I mistook you for Catrin.’ Then mockingly he looked around. ‘No James?’
    ‘No Catrin either. Sorry to disappoint you,’ Davina snapped, for the tone of his voice had made her hackles rise. ‘We’re not inseparable, you know.’
    Without invitation, Rex sat down beside her. ‘Aren’t you? I’d rather begun to think you might be. I take it they’ve deserted you?’
    ‘The boot’s rather on the other foot. They’re having a cutthroat game of table tennis and I felt like a breath of fresh air. What about you? Bridge over?’
    ‘Far from it—which reminds me, I’d better be getting back.’ Rex got up as he spoke and extinguished his cigarette. ‘I stole a few minutes to have a smoke while I was dummy. I’m playing with your grandmother and judging from her expression she had every intention of giving our opponents the trouncing of their lives. It wouldn’t even surprise me to find she’d made a grand slam,’ and he walked away in the direction of the house.
    Davina was left staring thoughtfully at his retreating figure. He was completely different from the Australians she had met on her birthday trip with Uncle Martin and Aunt Marjorie, but their itinerary had not included what Davina thought of as the ‘real' Australia. In air-conditioned hotels and mingling mostly with business people she felt she had missed out. Rex Fitzpaine gave her a feeling of a different and perhaps a rougher existence where all the conveniences of modem man were not taken for granted.
    She was in bed when Catrin returned from the bathroom to get out her face cream. ‘Your Rex Fitzpaine interests me,’ Catrin observed, and Davina put down the magazine she was reading to glance enquiringly at her younger sister.
    ‘In what way?’
    ‘Well, to start with, he listens. Hadn’t you noticed? He asked me all sorts of questions about the family when we were having tea this afternoon and he seemed genuinely interested in my replies, not as if he was simply making conversation. And his manners are so beautiful. He’s quite won Gran over already, and the aunts, even Mum herself—well, they’re practically eating out of his hand.’
    Catrin paused with the pot of face cream in one hand and Davina said nothing to interrupt her sister’s amazing confidences. ‘Yet I feel there’s something more,’ Catrin went on thoughtfully. ‘My guess is that under that beautiful, smooth exterior he’s really a pretty tough cookie.’
    ‘Any grounds for that masterful summing up?’
    Catrin wiped her face with a tissue. ‘Not really. Just a feeling I have which I hope is wrong for your sake. He’d be a marvellous person to have at your back in a tight corner, but the very devil when crossed, and won’t be easy to work for.’
    ‘I’ll have to watch my step then, won’t I?’ Davina replied lightly. ‘Come along, Morgan le Fay. Put away your crystal ball and come to bed. I don’t know about you, but I’m flaked out.’
    But despite Davina’s assertion that she was tired, long after her sister’s steady breathing told her that Catrin was sound asleep she found herself staring into the darkness and mulling over the words of warning to which she had recently listened.