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Updated: May 17, 2025
Magda hardly knew what impulse had bidden her save Dan Storran from himself check the hot utterance to which he had so nearly given voice and which to a certain extent she had herself provoked. Driven by the bitterness of spirit which Michael's treatment of her had engendered, she knew that she had flirted outrageously with Dan ever since she had come to Stockleigh.
It was not until they had reached the cigarette and coffee stage of the proceedings that she allowed a small, well-considered sigh to escape her and drift away into the silence that had fallen between them. Storran glanced across at her with suddenly observant eyes. "What is it?" he asked quickly. "You look worried. Are you?" She nodded silently.
She lifted her face to his and very tenderly, almost reverently, he kissed her. She knew that in that last kiss there was no disloyalty to Michael. It held renunciation. It accepted forgiveness. "Did you know that Dan Storran was in front to-night?" asked Gillian, as half an hour later she and Magda were driving back to Hampstead together.
She must know what Stockleigh signified to him. "What do you mean? Tell me what you mean!" she asked desperately. "Do you remember the story I told you down at Netherway of a man and his wife and another woman?" "Yes, I remember" almost whispering. "That was the story of my sister, June, and her husband, Dan Storran. You were the other woman."
Then, taking her courage in both hands she told him quickly and composedly the whole story of the engagement and its rupture, and let him understand just precisely what June's death, owing to the special circumstances in which it had occurred, had meant for Magda of retribution and of heartbreak. Storran listened without comment, in his eyes an odd look of concentration.
Above the doorway trails of budding honeysuckle challenged the supremacy of more roses in their summer prime, and just within, in the cool shadow of the porch, stood a woman's slender figure. Gillian never forgot that first glimpse of June Storran.
It appeared that Michael had been commissioned to paint the portrait of some Italian society beauty and had gone to Rome. Gillian screwed up her small face resolutely. "I shall go to Rome!" she announced succinctly. There was a definite defiance in her tone, and Storran concealed a smile. "Of course you will," he replied composedly.
With an effort she dismissed the fresh tangle of thought provoked by the morning's brief scene with Dan Storran, and, dressing quickly, went downstairs to the mid-day dinner which was the order of things at Stockleigh. At first the solid repast, with its plentitude of good farmhouse fare partaken of during the hottest hour of the day, had somewhat appalled Magda.
And whether people chose to talk because she and Dan Storran travelled to Paris together or to Timbuctoo, for the matter of that, if Michael had chanced to depart thither troubled her not at all. When Storran rejoined her a much more practical consideration presented itself to her mind. "But, my dear man, you can't fly with me to Paris without even a tooth-brush! I'd forgotten you'd no luggage!"
"June my little sister, the happiest of mortals dead, through you. And Storran he was a big man, white all through down and out. And God knows who else has had their sun put out by you. . . . You're like a blight spreading disease and corruption wherever you go." A little moan broke from her lips. For a moment it was a physical impossibility for her to speak.
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