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the window-sill. ‘And he must’ve smelt of wine,’ she said finally.
    The cat turned her head fastidiously from the milk, looked out of the window as if offended.
    ‘You see!’ said Sophy, tragically.
    Sophy went to bed before supper. She said her prayers facing a photograph of her mother, as if it were a graven image. Cassandra, fidgeting round the room, a little embarrassed, thought the photograph itself unsuitable for such a purpose, the secretly smiling face, the mocking, insolent eyes.
    At supper there were only the three women, but Margaret indicated a folded white note on Cassandra’s plate.
    ‘My cousin wrote it for you when I took his tablets to him.’
    ‘You know, Margaret,’ said Aunt Tinty, ‘I wouldn’t wonder if it isn’t migraine Marion suffers from.’ She took cauliflower cheese from a silver dish. The cheese had seethed and bubbled and was a curdled mass.
    Cassandra unfolded the paper. A spiky, but beautiful handwriting, very black ink.
     
‘My Dear Miss Dashwood,
    Will you forgive my absence on your arrival. My cousin will have explained. I shall look forward to seeing you and welcoming you to-morrow.
    Marion Vanbrugh.’
     
    Cassandra scarcely read it, but fingered it occasionally, waiting to savour it in solitude; for it had a fine measure of importance, this first note, and the crossing of every ‘t’, the flying comma, each linked letter must be analysed for its clue.
    ‘Forgive my mentioning my own private affairs,’ said Margaret casually, ‘but I find, mother, that I am expecting a child.’
    The old woman started, her fork jagged across her plate.‘Why, Margaret, what a way to say such a thing! What a way to tell your mother such a thing! In the middle of a meal.’
    ‘It was the way I preferred,’ Margaret said cruelly.
    Cassandra realised that she had been waited for, to be used as a screen by Margaret against her mother’s fussing. She flushed, because she resented being put to this use, hated the other’s rudeness.
    ‘In the circumstances, I shall prolong my holiday. Ben would rather I did that. Dobby must manage.’
    Ben was her husband, Dobby her partner. This was not explained to Cassandra.
    ‘But will Marion like it?’ Tinty began, but fearing lest her daughter might say, in front of the governess, ‘he will like the money,’ or something embarrassing and impossible of that kind, she went on quickly: ‘Well, it will be very nice, I dare say. That is good news your first evening with us, Miss Dashwood. You must forgive our discussing these things, but we have so little time together.’
    Indeed, they only had all day.
    ‘Someone has been at the glucose,’ Tinty went on, spooning it over her stewed apple. ‘It was scattered all over the sideboard.’
    Cassandra blushed. Margaret noted the blush.
    ‘Did you go round the garden with Sophy?’ Tinty asked.
    ‘No. It went on raining.’
    ‘So it did. What a pity! It would have given you an appetite.’
    ‘Nothing could give her an appetite for this,’ said Margaret, pushing aside the mush of apple.
    ‘No, it isn’t very nice,’ her mother agreed. ‘Never mind.’
    After supper, they sat for a while in the drawing-room, and Margaret strummed a little at the piano and then jumped up and went restlessly to the long windows at the front of the house. She looked out at the rainy garden, beating her knuckles on theglass softly, and Cassandra saw her face quieter and relaxed, her expression peaceful. Aunt Tinty wrote a long letter to a distant relation, exposing it, bit by bit as it was written, to Margaret’s bullying comments.
    Soon Cassandra said good night and went upstairs. As she passed the room which Sophy had whispered was her father’s, she heard footsteps going up and down over a carpeted floor. She went on down the corridor, through archways, round corners, and came to her own room.
    On the dressing-table she disposed her parents’ photographs, her mother’s ivory and initialled brushes; her few