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of his shaving soap in her nostrils. He said, quietly, “Tell you something, Hetty. I was damned proud of you today,” and when, mildly surprised, she asked why, he replied, “I expected a scene and there wasn’t one. The old man would have hated a graveside sniffle on your part. Were you thinking that?”
    No, she said, she hadn’t even felt like sniffling, or not once they were clear of the church, where she had had time to marshal her thoughts and remind herself of the old man’s pitiful helplessness since June. How could anyone who loved him want that prolonged indefinitely?
    “Young Stella came near to making a scene,” he said, absently.
    “Stella has her problems. But I daresay you realised that today.”
    “Yes, but they aren’t insurmountable,” he said. “She’ll handle them, given time.” And then, almost irritably, “Neither you nor I would have had a moment’s peace if we had insisted on second thoughts and held out for a long formal engagement. She’s not got your strength of mind but she can be damned obstinate.”
    It was true, of course, but there was rather more to it than that and she was resolved to pursue the subject, but not now. There were more immediate matters on hand. She had not been a wife to him all these years without learning to recognise priorities, and said, with a shrug, “If she wants advice I hope she’ll have the sense to ask for it,” and was surprised when he laughed and demanded, in that shameless way of his, whether Stella had been given any in advance.
    “Far more than anyone gave me.”
    “Aye,” he said, goodhumouredly, “I’ll warrant that’s so. And more than most brides get this side of the Channel. Let it ride then. These things have a way of working themselves out.”
    She knew from his tone that he was not disposed to stand there half the night speculating on his daughter’s problems. At times like this, when the great house was still, and they were alone together in a room lit by the single dressing-table lamp and the flicker of the coals in the high grate that had replaced the great open hearth, she was able to isolate herself from the complexities of family life and revert to the mood of their earliest days together, before they had assumed such a packload of responsibilities. As always his heavy masculinity enfolded her like a many-caped mantle, so that she would have liked very much to have flattered him by a show of impatience, but his weight pinned her to the stool and she could do no more than take his hands, pressing the palms to her breasts. It was enough. He tweaked the ribbon bow of her nightdress and bared one shoulder, kissing it lightly, almost perfunctorily; but when she responded to his kisses with an involuntary flutter, of the kind she experienced on every single occasion he had laid hands on her over the last twenty years, he became his usual purposeful self, as decisive about love as he was about trade and barter down at the yard. Without more ado he slipped the nightdress from both her shoulders and cupped her breasts in his hands, lifting their fullness to his lips so that his posture increased his weight and she cried out, laughingly, that this was more than she could bear and he should show a little patience, tonight, of all nights.
    It was a familiar pattern, a game they had played longer than she cared to remember now that the streaks of grey in his hair were past ignoring. He said, lifting her bodily from the stool so that her nightdress slipped to her thighs, “When I show patience this side of the bedroom door, my dear, you can begin wondering what I’m about in the regions. You’re not always on hand, remember. Damn it, we’ve not gone the rounds together since the Colonel took to his bed.”
    She remembered then, as he carried her across to the four-poster, recalling a moment in their marriage that had been etched in tragedy, for it had occurred no more than a few hours before the incident that cost him his leg and