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qualified nurse, and I’ve got a job to do even if I were. And unless you’re hand-in-glove with a Harley Street specialist you’ll never get any patients.” “I could advertise,” Charlotte suggested with the same eagerness.
    “You still won’t get any patients. Anyway, do you know anything at all about the doctors down here?”
    “Not so far. But there must be one quite near. In fact — ” and she broke
    off.
    “Yes?”
    “There used to be one with a house down in the cove. He was my Aunt Jane’s doctor... a Dr. Tremarth. His people once lived here at Tremarth....” “How interesting.”
    “And when I was a child I played with his nephew who came to stay with him.”
    “More and more interesting,” Hannah commented. “In fact, quite absorbing. But I fail to follow your line of reasoning. You’re not suggesting that this Dr. Tremarth might still be functioning as the local G.P.?”
    “Of course not! In fact, I know he’s dead.” Hannah’s eyebrows rose.
    “Spirit healing?” she suggested. “Or has the nephew taken his place?”
    Charlotte rose restlessly and started to prowl about the kitchen. She stood in front of the cold and empty range and regarded it dubiously as she decided to take Hannah more fully into her confidence. She told her about her visitor of the morning ... the man who had once, as a mere gangling youth, carried her around her aunt’s orchard and helped her rob the apple trees of their fruit, and who was now so changed that it was difficult to identify him with that slightly besotted youth. For there was no doubt about it, at that time, despite the nuisance value that she had for him, he had been under some sort of a spell that she exercised ... a kind of willing slave to all her more precocious whims.
    She had responded by treating him with supreme childish arrogance ... had pulled his hair and even kicked him at times, when she felt in the mood, and he didn’t come to heel immediately. It was true that at times he had looked as if he would like to give her a jolly good spanking. But he never had.
    And now every time his grey eyes flickered over her they did so with a kind of contempt and she had the feeling that his only possible use for young women of her sort was motivated by the knowledge that she stood between him and something he desired ardently... far more ardently than his bleak grey eyes could possibly make one believe.
    “He wants to buy Tremarth,” she ended with a bluntness that made the words sound almost brutal. “It’s his family home, and he wants it. And he’s got so much money that I simply have to name my price!”
    Hannah sat forward as if her attention had been firmly riveted at last.
    “And — ?” she asked.
    “I’m not going to let him have it. I won’t sell! ”
    Hannah drew a long breath that was almost like a breath of acute relief.
    “I’m glad,” she said. “If you sell the place I won’t be able to come and stay here... and I’ve every intention of spending my summer holidays here for the next ten years. After that, we’ll see. I’ll probably try Bournemouth, or somewhere like that.”
    Charlotte looked very nearly as relieved as her friend sounded.
    “Then you do think I’m not just being awkward refusing to sell?”
    “Of course I don’t.... For one thing, you’ve hardly had a chance yet to find out whether you like it here, and even if you do ultimately sell you ought to allow yourself a brief respite in which to enjoy your sudden inheritance. Your Aunt Jane would probably haunt you for the rest of your life if you handed the place over to a stranger immediately because the colour of his money dazzled you — ”
    “But Tremarth isn’t a stranger! His people once lived here.”
    “Yes, you’ve already explained that to me. But if family pride is one of their principal virtues why did they ever part with the house in the first instance?” “They were probably hard up —”
    “But this young man is rich!