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as if describing a dangerous and fascinating kind of wild beast; but just now I had room only for one thing. "No," I said, "it's all right. But—well, it's odd, Norma, the whole thing, and I don't like mysteries. Did Mavis find out anything about her} Who she is, where she comes from?"
    "No."
    I looked unseeingly down at the tray of crockery in my hand. Fleetingly, I was there again: the Roman Wall in the sunshine, the bubble of the curlews, the smell of thyme, the swans preening and dipping in the lough below, and, facing me, that hard blue stare, as genuinely dangerous, I felt sure, as anything that Norma could have dreamed up ...
    I said abruptly: "I want to know who she is. But I don't want to speak to her. Look, Norma, she's got a dress-box or something with her, and it's labelled. I'm going into the kitchen again, now, because I don't want to look as if I've any interest in it. Will you ask Mavis to go over, say something—any excuse will do—and get a look at that label?"
    "Sure. You leave it to me. Anything for a spot of excitement. Oh, and tell them to get a move on in there: I'll be out of cups in a minute."
    When I got back from the kitchen with the cups, the corner table was empty. Mavis was at the counter with Norma. I said, a little anxiously : "Did she see you looking?"
    "Not her," said Mavis. "Funny sort of woman, eh? Norma says you don't know her."
    "No." I set the tray down on the counter. "The box was labelled, then? What was the name?"
    "Dermott. A Miss Dermott."
    I turned slowly to look at her. "Dermott."
    "Docs it mean anything?" asked Norma.
    Mavis said: "Dermott? That's an Irish name, isn't it?"
    "What's the matter?" said Norma quickly. "Mary, do you know her?" I said sharply: "Did you see the address? Was there one? Did you sec where she was from?" Mavis was looking at mc curiously. "Yes, I did. Some address near Bellingham, a farm. White-something Farm, it was. Mary,
    what—?" "Whitescar?"
    "Yes, that was it. Then you do know her?"
    "No. I've never seen her in my life. Honestly. But—" I took in my breath—"she must know someone I know, that's all. I— I've met someone from Whitescar . . . she must have heard I worked here, and came to see. But what an odd way of doing it, not to speak, I mean . . . Oh, well," I managed a smile, speaking lightly. "That's that little mystery solved, and nothing to it after all. Thanks a lot, Mavis."
    "Think nothing of it." And Mavis, dismissing the incident, hurried away. But Norma, lifting the piles of clean cups and saucers from the tray I had brought, and stacking them slowly in place, eyed me thoughtfully.
    "Nothing to it, eh?"
    "Nothing at all. If she's here tomorrow I'll speak to her
    myself."
    "I would," said Norma. "I would, too. Find out what she's playing at. . . Friend of a friend of yours, eh?"
    "Something like that."
    Something life that. I could see the likeness now: the poorish copy of that dramatically handsome face, the sepia print of Connor Winslow's Glorious Technicolor. "My half-sister keeps house at Whitescar . . ." She would be some half-dozen years older than he, with the different colouring she had probably got from her Dermott father, and none of the good looks that his Winslow blood had given Connor. But the likeness, ill-defined, shadowy, a characterless travesty of his vivid charm, was there, to be glimpsed now and then, fleetingly, by anyone who knew. I thought, suddenly: I wonder if she minds.
    "I wouldn't let it upset you," said Norma. "Really I wouldn't."
    "I. won't. Thanks, Norma. Don't worry."
    She wasn't looking at me. She began to rearrange a carefully stacked pile of chocolate biscuits.
    "There's a man in it, isn't there?"
    "Well, you could hardly—" I paused. It was easier that way, after all. "Yes, I suppose there is."
    "Oh well." This, for Norma, would apparently have explained behaviour a good deal odder than Lisa Dermott's. "Well, you take it from me, dear, have done with it if it bothers you. If she's here tomorrow I'd