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world of vicarage and village and social proprieties was soothing and comforting to my mind.
    Axel found me at noon. He was wearing riding clothes, and I noticed for the first time then that although it was still gray outside the rain had stopped.
    “I wondered where you were,” he said. “I couldn’t find you.”
    I knew not what to say. Presently he closed the door behind him and crossed the floor slowly to my couch.
    “I doubt whether there’s much sense in delaying our departure for Haraldsdyke much longer,” he said as I fingered the leather binding of the book in my hands. “Today is Saturday. Unless you object, I thought we might leave on Monday morning. If the roads are not too disgraceful we may reach Rye on Wednesday night.”
    “As you wish.”
    He was silent. Presently I felt his cool fingers against my cheek, but I did not look up; I was steeling myself against any reference he might make to the distasteful memory which lay between us, but in the end all he said was: “There’s no need to look as if you think the company of the opposite sex is a sadly overrated commodity. Matters will improve in time.” And then he was gone before I could attempt to reply, and I was alone once more with my book in the silent room.
    I wondered when “in time” would be, but evidently it was not to be beneath the roof of Claybury Park. That night and the following night the door between our bedrooms remained closed, and on Monday we left the lonely peace of that beautiful house in Surrey for the mists of the Romney Marsh and the shrouded walls of Haraldsdyke.

 
    Two
    “Perhaps I should tell you more about my family,” Axel said as we dined together on Monday night at Sevenoaks.
    Outside it was dark, but where we sat in the private sitting room accorded to us by the innkeeper, a huge fire blazed on the hearth and the room was warm and comfortable. After the tediousness of the long hours of travel it was a relief to escape from the jolting post-chaise and the chill of the damp weather.
    “Yes,” I said uncertainly, “I would like to hear more about your family. You only described them so briefly before.” I was uncertain because I was by no means sure that this was the answer he wanted. At the same time I was also annoyed that I should be so nervous with him that a single chance remark should throw me instantly into a state of confusion.
    I began to examine a scrap of roast beef with meticulous care, but when he next spoke he seemed unaware of my embarrassment.
    “My father died last Christmas Eve, as I’ve already told you,” he said. “He was a man of strong personality, typical of many an English gentleman who belonged to the last century rather than to this one. He was a staunch Tory, a confirmed conservative, a believer in letting his land be farmed the way it had been farmed since the Conquest, violently anti-Bonaparte and anti-European. It always amazed me that he of all people could have brought himself to marry a foreigner, but maybe he was more liberal when he was younger. Or maybe his experiences with my mother contributed to his later prejudices against foreigners. They certainly weren’t happily married. She left him even before I was bo rn , but fortunately had the means to set up an establishment of her own in Vienna where I entered the world a few months afterwards. Following my birth she never fully regained her health and in fact died five years later. After that I was brought up by her elder brother, my uncle, who was later appointed to the Court of St. James’s on some minor diplomatic mission in the days when the Emperor was still Holy Roman Emperor, and not merely Emperor of Austria as he is today. I went with him to London, and my uncle, who had always found me rather an intrusion on the privacy and freedom of his bachelor existence, arranged for me to meet my father in the hope that my father would perhaps relieve him of his responsibilities where I was concerned.
    “My father came