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heard Dorothy talking in the kitchen on the far side of the building. The voice came in at the window, so all the service doors were closed. There was nothing else to listen to, nothing but the clocks and the rustling of the fire.
    Shulie got out of bed and put a clean cotton gown over her nightdress, and a petticoat over that. There was another petticoat among the things which Dorothy had folded away; it was very old, partly quilted, and had been designed to be worn with a haunch hoop, so that it was very wide. Shulie had taken a great fancy to it. It was of pale green satin, washed nearly white, and was lined at the back with a coloured cotton stripe, not quite suitable, but well enough for underneath in seventeen-fifty, when it was new.
    Shulie found it. She made not even a superficial attempt to tidy after her, but stepped over the riot of garments with it over her arm and went out like a sigh through the house.
    She was in some uneasy pain now, and hurried.
    Nobody saw her go, and no one was very anxious to spread the news of her departure when at last it was noticed nearly an hour and a half later.
    Jane Bretton was safely back at Mundham by then, but the midwife proved nearly as much of a trial to Dorothy, who was still obsessed with the
amour propre
of the house.
    At Groats there was at first a moment of complete panic. Just for a little while, even the secret solaces had not yet popped up in country minds to lighten the blow. Just for a while, the awful natural delight in any diversion, however alarming, and the fleeting hope so wicked and so ashamed, that this source of disgrace might die and vanish for ever, had not crept into their thoughts. For a moment everybody paused blankly.
    Old Galantry surprised and comforted everybody by keeping his head, and in that he was alone. From somewhere he fished up a power of quiet leadership no one had ever suspected in him before, and he was remarkably composed and matter of fact. It was he who whipped them all into action, and they were not an easy team. Dorothy was mulish; the midwife alternately happily hysterical and ghoulishly prophetic; the other women, made self-important by the nature of the crisis, were knowing and smug; while of the two men servants, Richard was dour and liable to be almost openly angry, and Donald, a simpler soul, was eager to get his dog, which was a wonderfully good pointer, into the chase, but was yet vaguely aware that somehow or other that would not do.
    It was a fine, cold night with a full moon rising, and after some three hours of the hunt, Richard came up to his master, who was standing on the lawn in his riding cloak.
    Old Galantry was looking much younger in the moonlight; he was very grave, and the light wind was ruffling his hair. Richard hesitated. At last he said very quietly:
    â€œShe’ll be about. Must be. Hiding up somewhere.”
    Galantry turned his head. “Did you go to the Home Farm?”
    â€œYes, sir. There’s not a building within three miles I haven’t looked into. She ain’t there. She’s about somewhere here. Won’t come out.”
    Galantry assented without speaking. There was a curious sympathy between them, not so much the bond between man and man as between expert and expert in the ways of the wild.
    All round them the garden was packed with small movements and Lilliputian sound as the gods must hear cities. The unclothed tree tops, curled into new symmetry by the springing buds, swayed against a clear lake of sky in which remote stars looked their distance. The black shrubs crouched and rustled, ferreting in the earth. It was a night of happenings, growings, urgency, fights for life.
    Under the ground the bulbs were forcing their way up against the matted turf. The grass smelled sharp and new, and everywhere there was irrepressible, unconquerable life, struggling and straining to be free. The earth was cold and wet and dangerous, but agonizingly lovely and tremendously at