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with no alternative but to meet her plane.
    “I’ll go and feed Nelson now. Then, when you’re ready, we can go to Edward.”
    As her aunt was about to leave the room Alix had a guilty thought.
    “Oh, that re min ds me. I’m afraid I saw Richard Herrold this morning.”
    Lady Merrick bristled.
    “Indeed? Where, may I ask?”
    “On the lagoon. Nelson and I swam out—and there he was, in a boat, fishing. I’m afraid he means to fish there—just off your poi nt—whenever the tide is right.”
    “He sounds uncommonly like that father of his,” Lady Merrick commented with strong disapproval. “I hope you snubbed him as he deserved?”
    “I did ask him if he couldn’t fish somewhere else. But he said this was his favourite place. So what could I do?”
    “H’m. Nothing, I suppose. Can’t stop him. You’re rather taken with him, aren’t you?”
    “Well, yes, I do like him. He was awfully nice to me on the way here. Though I’m afraid he’s completely on his father’s side about this Paradise scheme.”
    “And there’s the rub. I do admit he appeared to have the same sort of superficial charm as his dreadful father. But I wouldn’t trust it a yard. Opportunists, I don’t doubt—both of ’em.”
    Alix was silent. She couldn’t agree with her aunt’s strictures on Richard, but didn’t want to make an issue of it.
    “He wants to date you, I suppose?”
    “Well—he wants me to go fishing again tomorrow. He—I helped him land a big fish this morning — ” Better say nothing about the invitation to dine. Write it off. Forget it.
    “H’m,” said her aunt again. She stood with her hand on the knob of the door, appearing to cogitate. “As you’re going off so soon, it can’t do much harm,” she said finally. “Of course I don’t want you to miss your morning swim. So nice for Nelson too. And I suppose it’s just possible you might learn something useful — about Herrold Senior’s further intentions, I mean.”
    “I should think I easily might.”
    Lady Merrick gave a resigned shrug.
    “All right. But no dates on shore, please. Can’t have Herrold Senior think I’m weakening.”
    “We’ll see how good a sleuth I am,” Alix said with her infectious laugh. And laughing, wondered at herself.
    Though the shadow of Bernard’s letter, and this journey to find out the truth of it, hung over her, the odd sense of elation persisted. She felt at a loss to understand herself.
    She wished Bernard were with her now. She was sure that if he were, and could take her in his arms and hug her in his affectionately bear-like way, and they could talk, everything would be as it always had between them. She wanted so much to keep things that way.

 
    CHAPTER FOUR
    THE little town of Edward, where the residents of Paradise did their shopping, changed their library books, and fuelled their motor-cars, was sited well inland from the lagoon, which it viewed from a height, and off the national road, which by-passed it. It was backed by wooded foot-hills and the towering slopes of the Berg.
    A gravel side-road lined with oaks, flowering gums, jacarandas and occasional small dwellings and shops, climbed gradually into its main street.
    Along this side-road, this morning, wound donkey - carts carrying coloured families, a span of oxen in charge of a Khosa boy armed with a long whip, a horseman in khaki drill and a Boer War helmet, a large number of cyclists and pedestrians, and several lorries and motor-cars.
    Among these Lady Merrick threaded her way in her ancient but stately Dodge with a nonchalance bo rn of familiarity, tooting her horn briskly and now and then uttering a mildly unladylike expletive.
    “Always a bit congested on this stretch on Saturdays”, she remarked tolerantly. “Day off for the natives and coloureds.”
    The main street was busy too, though with no more than a cosy small-town bustle of pedestrians strollin g, stopping to chat, popping in and out of shops; and of traffic moving sedately