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Mr. Consett gazed at her indignantly.
    â€œIn fact, you were going to slide off without so much as letting me know! What a
Schweinhund
you are, Julia.”
    â€œWhat is a
Schweinhund?”
asked Julia, sipping her tomato-juice—her languages did not extend to German.
    â€œA mixture of a cur and a swine,” said Mr. Consett measuredly. “No, really, Julia—you are
monstrous.”
    â€œI was in such a rush,” she said, turning the dove’s rather than the cow’s eyes onto him. “I hadn’t a moment to see anyone, Geoffrey; truly I hadn’t. Fixing my newspapers, and the visas, and getting extra Travellers’ Cheques, and finding a boat to go on—you can’t think what an absolute
scrum
it’s been.”
    â€œWhy Morocco, anyhow?” the young man asked. He was very tall; pallid, with thick fair hair, a square intellectual face, and pale blue eyes, he usually looked as severely detached from this world as a youthful St. John the Evangelist in an early Flemish predella.
    Julia explained the nature of her quest; Geoffrey Consett immediately became extremely un-detached.
    â€œWhat is this Colin? A boy-friend? Otherwise, why do you go hooshing off to find him in this completely wild-cat way? I never heard such rubbish.”
    â€œOh, Geoffrey, don’t be a clot! People aren’t usually boyfriends in at all a
heavy
way if they go off for three years at a time, and never write. But in fact I’ve hardly seen anything of Colin since he was at Eton.”
    â€œEton? What surname?”
    â€œMonro, you silly. He’s Aunt Ellen’s son. And I’m only going because Uncle John has gone and died, and Aunt Ellen is in such a fuss, and poor wretched Edina—who makes twice
your
salary, I may say—has got to stay and run Glentoran till someone can find Colin and make him come back and look after his own infernal estate. Not but what it’s a most darling place,” said Julia.
    â€œColin Monro—yes, I remember him; he was in Merry-weather’s,” said Geoffrey, temporarily disregarding all but the Etonian aspect of Julia’s remarks. “A pig-headed creature.”
    â€œOh, was he? Well, he’s a poor correspondent.”
    Mr. Consett, during the second round of drinks and over dinner at the Oviedo, continued to cross-examine Julia about Colin and her trip. At one point he asked how theorange-selling venture had been financed. Julia had no idea, but unguardedly let out the fact that nine months earlier the balance of Colin’s account at Duntroon had been transferred to the Banque Regié Turque at Casablanca. Mr. Consett pounced on this piece of information like a peregrine on a pigeon.
    â€œTransferred it to Casablanca? How big was the balance?”
    â€œI haven’t the smallest clue,” said Julia. “Why?”
    â€œBecause it’s illegal, for a sum of any size. My dear Julia, surely
you
know about currency restrictions?”
    â€œWell, yes, for travelling. I never thought of that,” said Julia candidly. “But old Mr. Maclntyre at the Bank of Scotland in Duntroon would never do anything illegal, from what Edina says.”
    â€œI must look into this,” said Mr. Consett, with more animation than he had yet shown—“the Bank of England will know. Nine months ago, you say?”
    â€œOh, Geoffrey,
please
don’t go making trouble! Edina and Aunt Ellen have quite enough bothers on their plate as it is, without you stirring up the Bank of England with your beastly bureaucratic spoon.”
    â€œMy dear Julia, do be your age! What all these papers employ you for I can’t think,” said Geoffrey. He often tried, rather helplessly, to impose his superior knowledge on his love by way of subduing her—a futile process always, and particularly unsuccessful in Julia’s case. “If what has been done is within the regulations it can’t make