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speculation among the outdoor servants. A sort of ritual attended it.
    Grubb trudged across the park, muttering strangely as he went. Such browsing sheep or cattle as he met with he cursed heartily. Eventually he reached the boundary of the property and paused. Before him here, and almost on the highroad, stood a cottage evidently long untenanted. Its windows were boarded up and in places the roof had fallen in. Even amid the pervasive disrepair of Sherris it was arrestingly dreary and forlorn. Grubb halted and for some moments stared. Several times, and with a curious effect of unsuccessful experiment, his features worked, contorting themselves into a semblance of sudden inspiration. Then they clouded again; moroseness took up its settled stance; with a gesture baffled and discouraged Grubb scratched his jaw.
    It was eight o’clock.
    It was eight o’clock and Mrs Gollifer would be late; nevertheless she found it difficult to throw away her cigarette, press the self-starter and complete her drive to this awkward dinner. Oliver Dromio presumably was still abroad, so there would be no call for the final and fantastic insincerity involved in a meeting with him. But was there not insincerity enough?
    Kate Dromio was an old friend. She was – yes, surely she was – deeply beholden to Kate. Kate could not have foreseen this eventual disaster, and she would be heart-broken if she knew. Or would she? Making an effort of will and throwing away the cigarette, Mary Gollifer frowned. You just couldn’t tell with Kate. Her feelings about Oliver, her feelings about Lucy – there was something oblique or uncertain in them. And she was correspondingly uncertain about the feelings of others. Otherwise she would not give little dinners of just this sort.
    The truth was that she, Mary Gollifer, should have stopped knowing the Dromios long ago. She should have stopped her son Geoffrey knowing them… They were not a satisfactory spectacle. And all the trouble – or all the trouble as Mrs Gollifer saw it – proceeded from Lucy’s position in the household. With Kate Dromio, and as an adopted daughter, Lucy had failed to come off. And the girl knew it. Not that she was a girl; she was a woman who ought to have been married and away from the place long ago.
    But what if Lucy wanted to marry Oliver? And what if her own son Geoffrey wanted to marry Lucy? Mrs Gollifer felt anger leap in her like a flame; felt consternation and panic gather round her like a cloud. She let in the clutch and drove fast for Sherris, reckless in these winding lanes.
    She brought her mind back to dwell on the Dromios as the mind of a disinterested acquaintance might do. And she saw that with Lucy, clearly, Kate Dromio had bitten off more than she could chew. In personal relationships one can commit no greater crime – and mere generosity and lack of self-knowledge can lead to it. Long ago, and after tragedy and disappointment, Kate had wanted the child. But she had not wanted her enough. Or not enough to weigh against something else. But against what ? Mrs Gollifer had no idea. Kate’s tragedy had been deeper than was known and the little girl – a waif, thought Mrs Gollifer, no more than a waif – had failed to ease it into oblivion. Between mother and adopted daughter the right thing had not grown, and when that happens the wrong things grow instead. Nothing very wrong, surely, but enough to make frustration and disillusion the dominant notes at Sherris. Frustration and disillusion… Who would willingly dine – or live – with these?
    Kate was not to blame; in fairness it was necessary to hold to that. Mary Gollifer’s foot pressed the accelerator as she made the assertion. If disillusioned and defeated, that was to say, Kate Dromio had ample cause. She could be hardly unaware that Oliver was – well, that Oliver was no good.
    It was nearly ten past eight. Mrs Gollifer’s car swept round the last curve of the Dromios’ drive and the house was revealed