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mouth, a little on the thin side, curled.
    'On an island like Barbados, surely that must prove that he cares for you. There must be plenty of lovely women, enough temptation?'
    'I know perfectly well what there is on Barbados,'
    Blanche snapped, 'but he doesn't stay there all the time. He has other places in the Caribbean. One island in particular is completely isolated and he enjoys staying there for months on end. That's probably where he's been the last three months, avoiding temptation. There, I've been told, he often supervises the work personaly, but if he thinks I'm going to bury myself there for weeks on end, he can think again!'
    'It must be because he's interested in what he's doing there,' Emma suggested reasonably. 'I can't somehow imagine him doing anything he didn't want to do.'
    'Don't ask me,' Blanche retorted sharply. 'It can't have missed your avid little ears that I scarcely know Rick at al.
    Sometimes I wonder if he'll suit me. I've heard a rumour that he's a very sensuous man.'
    'Then if I felt that way, I wouldn't marry him!' Emma made an effort to emulate Blanche's disconcerting frankness.
    'I would simply tell him I'd changed my mind.'
    'You wouldn't say that if you had a chance of marrying him,' Blanche mocked.
    'You seem determined to throw yours away.'
    'No, I don't,' Blanche replied smugly. 'I certainly intend being Mrs Rick Conway, but I also intend having a last fling, first, even if it kils me.'
    'Supposing Rick does?'
    'He won't find out, not if you promise to help me.' . 'Me?'
    Wild fright tore through Emma's young breast as she visualised being on the receiving end of Rick's anger. Already she'd had one sample of his quick fury, she didn't want another!
    Blanche ignored her protests as she had been doing for years. Emma couldn't expect her not to. 'All I'm asking you to do,' she said coldly, 'is to tell Rick, if he rings, that I'm visiting my aunt Helen, who we all know doesn't have the phone in. I'm taking Mother there tomorrow to stay with her for a few days as she hasn't been well and can't come to the wedding. So if Rick were to check in that direction, and I don't imagine for a moment he wil, it wouldn't occur to him to check which of us was actualy staying with Aunt Helen.'
    Amazed at Blanche's barefaced duplicity, Emma exclaimed, 'What if Rick asks your mother about it, when he gets back?'
    'Don't worry—he won't. Why should he?' Blanche, supremely confident, shrugged her shoulders. 'To make sure, I'll have a word with Mother later. She won't let me down.'
    'And you're asking me to help deceive Rick, too?'
    'Oh, come off it!' Blanche sneered with exasperation. 'Is there any need to be so dramatic? Why not pretend you have no wish to see him hurt, if it's your conscience that's worrying you? I'm sure if you look at it that way it won't be too difficult. You were always a charitable little thing.'
    'I—I still don't know…'
    'Wel, tell him the truth—any damn thing you like!'
    Blanche flung out of the bedroom in a fury. 'Tell him what suits you. I don't care. But I'm going to Paris with Rex!'
    As the door slammed behind her, Emma blinked at it in an agony of dismay, realising it would be impossible to tell Rick that kind of truth. She knew it and so did Blanche. If Blanche failed to get her own way by what she considered logical argument, she resorted to a craftiness which seldom failed.
    The house was quiet with no one to occupy it but herself, and Emma's nerves grew jagged as she daily anticipated Rick ringing from Australia. He had been in touch once, just before Blanche went away, and it was unlikely, Blanche said, that he would ring again until the end of the week, but one never knew.
    Blanche had, before she had left for Paris, broken the uneasy silence which had existed between the two girls ever since the scene in Emma's bedroom. She had reluctantly told Emma the name of the luxury hotel where she would be staying with Rex. She had parted with this information only because she