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thinking, or rather feeling, that she had lost Phillip. She had seen him returning along the passage, and entering the bedroom of the beautiful, the graceful Stefania Rozwitz, whom she adored. If only her mother had allowed her to train as a dancer, as she had wanted to when a child.

Chapter 2
FLUMEN MONACHORUM
    Phillip went to London to make a complaint about the engine of his car. The Portland Street salesman was suavely repetitive.
    “The Motor Association engineer’s report made it clear, surely, sir, that the oil-flow needed only a little adjustment. The regulating screw on the oil-pipe to the overhead valve tappets needed a turn or two, I thought I heard him say.”
    “I fancy that is what you suggested.”
    “Really, sir? But I’d not seen the car before, it only came in that morning. Have you tried adjusting the oil screw, sir?”
    “Oh yes. There’s no compression in one of the cylinders. You can hear the air hissing past the piston when you turn the handle.”
    “A broken ring, perhaps, sir. If you’d like us to take off the cylinder head for you, and can spare a couple of hours, I’ll get a mechanic to draw the piston.”
    Phillip went back that afternoon. The front cylinder was badly scored. “The gudgeon pin apparently came adrift, sir. It looks like a rebore.”
    “How much will a rebore cost?”
    “We might do it for ten pounds. She’ll require new pistons, of course. Shall we say fifteen pounds for the job?”
    “I suppose it wouldn’t be fair to ask you to pay for the entire job, since I bought the ’bus as it was. Caveat emptor, you know.”
    “That’s very sporting of you, sir. I’ll tell you what, we’ll throw in the pistons. How about a tenner for the job, sir? By the look of the toe-mark on the floorboard by the accelerator pedal, the last owner caned your engine somewhat.”
    When the work was done he drove home at thirty miles an hour. The dipstick showed clean oil, and none used. He must take Lucy for a drive, at once.
    “You look after the house while we’re gone, Felicity. I’m goingto take Lucy to look over that house at Flumen Monachorum we saw on the way to the Yacht Club last Saturday.”
    Felicity felt unhappy because Phillip did not invite her to come, too. Had he forgotten what he had said to her? ‘We’ll go over together, and if the place is all right, I’ll take it, then well bring Lucy and let it be a surprise for her.’
    Now she watched them driving away, and felt forlorn. He did not really love her. Was he in love with Stefania Rozwitz? Had he slept with her that night of the party?
    *
    “Lucy, d’ you think Mother will mind if we move some miles south of Fawley, now that they’re going to live there when Father retires?”
    “Well, all Mother’s letters have been about how wonderful it will be for her to be so near the children.”
    “But Skirr farmhouse is sold, as you know, with the rest of the estate, and we’ve got to give vacant possession by Michaelmas. And frankly, I don’t fancy living in one of the flats at Fawley, right on top of my parents.”
    Lucy thought that this was perhaps not the time to tell Phillip that Mother had written to her, asking her if it were possible that she, Lucy, might take Doris’ two little boys, so that Doris could go back to her old job of teaching in London, and spend her holidays in the country with them. Mother had said in her letter that, when she and Father came to live there, it might result in a reconciliation between Father and Doris, now that the marriage between Doris and Bob Willoughby had failed.
    Lucy would love to have Doris’ two little boys, it would be so good for Billy and Peter to have some cousins to play with. After all, Fawley was big enough, and there was plenty of garden, and the downs behind. But Phillip did not get on with either of his sisters, Elizabeth or Doris. So Lucy said nothing about the letter from his mother.
    “I don’t want to live at Fawley. The downs will be out of