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was hardly used; and she invested her services with a tender cajolery immensely gratifying to a woman who all her life long had passionately desired to be cosseted, and considered.
    ‘Oh, Loveday!’ Faith said, in her fretful voice, when Loveday came into her bedroom. ‘Has anything happened?’
    Beside the fair, faded woman in bed, with the thin hands and dilating blue eyes, Loveday Trewithian seemed to glow with life and vigour. She lifted the breakfast-tray from her mistress’s knees, and smiled  down at her warmly. ‘It’s nothing,’ she said soothingly.
    ‘I thought I heard Mr Penhallow shouting,’ Faith said falteringly.
    ‘Yes, sure,’ Loveday said. ‘My uncle Reuben’s saying it’s Mr Aubrey that’s made him angry. You don’t need to upset yourself, ma’am.’
    Faith relaxed on to her pillows with a little sigh, her mind relieved of its most pressing anxiety, that Clay, whose career at Cambridge was not fulfilling his early promise, might have done something to enrage his father. She watched Loveday set the tray down near the door, and begin to move about the room, laying out what clothes she thought Faith would wear. Her mind turned to a lesser care; she said: ‘The bath water was tepid again this morning. I do think Sybilla might pay a little attention to it."
    ‘I’ll speak to her for you, ma’am, never fear! They say it’s the system that’s wrong.’
    ‘Everything’s out-of-date or out-of-order in this house!’ I’aith said.
    ‘It isn’t fit for a delicate lady like you, ma’am, to have to live where there’s so little comfort,’ murmured Loveday. ‘It’s wonderful the way you put up with it, surely.’
    ‘Nobody cares whether it’s fit for me or not,’ Faith said. ‘I’m used to that. Trevellin never agreed with me. I never feel well here, and you know how badly I sleep. I had to take my drops last night, and even then I had a wretched night!’
    ‘It’s your nerves, and no wonder!’ Loveday said. ‘You ought to get away for a change, ma’am, if I may say so. This is no place for you.’
    ‘I wish I could go away, and never come back!’ Faith said, half to herself.
    A knock sounded on the door, and before she could reply to it Vivian had walked in. Loveday set the brushes straight on the dressing-table, picked up the breakfast tray, and went away. Faith saw from the crease between Vivian’s brows that she was in one of her moods, and at once said in a failing voice that she had passed a miserable night and had a splitting headache.
    ‘I’m not surprised at all,’ responded Vivian. ‘Your precious husband saw to it we should all have thoroughly disturbed nights.’
    ‘Oh! I didn’t know,’ Faith said nervously. ‘Was he awake in the night?’
    ‘Was he! You’re lucky: you don’t sleep on his side of the house. When he wasn’t pealing his bell, he was shouting for Martha. Disgusting old hag!’ Vivian took a cigarette from a battered packet in the pocket of her tweed jacket, and lit it. ‘Is it true that she was one of his mistresses?’ she asked casually. ‘Eugene says she was.’
    Faith flushed scarlet, and sat up in bed. ‘That’s just the sort of thing Eugene would say!’ she said angrily. ‘And I should have thought you would have had more decent feeling than to have repeated it to me!’
    ‘Oh, sorry!’ Vivian answered. ‘Only Penhallow’s affairs are always so openly talked about that I didn’t think you’d mind. It’s no use pretending you don’t know anything about them, Faith, because of course you do. And for God’s sake don’t pretend that you mind, because I know darned well you don’t.’
    "Well, I do mind!’ said Faith. ‘You needn’t think that because I say nothing I like having that old woman in my house, doing all the sort of things for Adam which any decent man would have had a valet for! But I think it’s disgraceful of Eugene to go about saying she used to be Adam’s mistress! Even if it were true, such things