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conversation to her waiting father. `Try not to worry, Dad,' she added quietly. Having been set up by her mother, she was not feeling all that friendly towards her, but attempted anyway to make things better between her parents. `And try not to be too cross with Mother; she only did what she did to help.'

    Wilmot Pearson looked as if he might have a lot to say about that, but settled for a mild, `I know.'

    The atmosphere in the house was not good for the rest of the day, however, and Lydie took herself off for a walk with a very great deal on her mind. She still felt crimson around the ears when she thought of the way she had gone to Jonah Marriott's office and demanded fifty thousand pounds!

    Oh, heavens! But-why on earth had he given it to her? Not only that, but he had made sure his cheque was banked and not returned to him with a polite note from her father. `There's money in this account to meet this amount?' she had asked him. `There will be ... by the time you get to your father's bank,' he had said, as in Make haste and get there-and she had fallen for it!

    Lydie carried on walking, not knowing where she was emotionally. With that money in the bank her father had some respite from his worries and he sorely needed that respite. Against that, though, since it was she who had asked for, and taken, that money, regardless of where she had deposited it, she was beginning to realise that the debt was not her father's but hers; solely hers.

    Feeling quite sick as she accepted that realisation, all she could do was to wonder where in creation she was going to find fifty-five thousand pounds with which to repay him? That question haunted her for the remainder of her walk.

    She returned home knowing that adding together the second-hand value of her car, the pearls her parents had given her for her twenty-first birthday and her small inheritance-if she could get into it-she would be lucky if she was able to raise as much as ten thousand pounds!

    She went to bed that night knowing that Jonah Marriott's hope that it would not be another seven years before they met again must have been said tongue in cheek. He must have known she would be on the phone wanting to see him the moment she discovered his loan from her father had been repaid long since. Jonah Marriott, without a doubt, had told his PA to inform her when she rang that he could not see her.

    Why he would do that, Lydie wasn't very sure, and conceded that very probably he'd given his PA no such instruction. It was just one Lydie Pearson feeling very much out of sorts where he was concerned. Him and his `Obviously your father doesn't know you've come here.' It was obvious to her, now, that Jonah knew her father would have soon stopped her visit had he the merest inkling of what she was doing.

    Lydie spent a wakeful night with J. Marriott Esquire occupying too much space in her head for comfort. Over-sexed swine! She hoped he was enjoying himself in Paris-whoever she was.

    The atmosphere in her home was no better when she went down to breakfast on Saturday morning. Lydie saw a whole day of monosyllabic conversation and of watching frosty glances go back and forth.

    `I think I'll go and see Aunt Alice. Truthfully,' she added at her father's sharp look.

     

    `While you're there for goodness' sake check what she intends to wear to the wedding next Saturday,' her mother instructed peevishly. `She's just as likely to turn up in that disgraceful old gardening hat and wellingtons!'

    Lydie was glad to escape the house, and drove to Penleigh Corbett and the small semi-detached house which her mother's aunt, to her mother's embarrassment, rented from the local council.

    To Lydie's dismay, though, the sprightly eighty-four-year-old was looking much less sprightly than when she had last seen her, for all she beamed a welcome. `Come in, come in!' she cried. `I didn't expect to see you before next week.'

    They were drinking coffee fifteen minutes later when, feeling quite