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Melrose will manage about the letters, and somehow you've got to prevent Magda from coming to Friars' Holm and finding out that I'm not there." "I'll take her away with me," declared Lady Arabella. "Rheumatism Harrogate. It's quite simple." Gillian heaved a sigh of relief. "Yes. That would be a good plan," she agreed. "Then I'd let you know when we should arrive " "'We?"
He thought he could make a pretty accurate guess at the state of Davilof's feelings, and was ironically conscious of a sense of fellowship with him. Lady Arabella's sharp voice cut across his reflections. "I don't care for this next thing," she said, flicking at her programme. "Mrs. Grey and I are going round to see Magda. Will you come with us?"
"It hurts me to see Magda like that. She's broken " "And my sister, June, is dead," he said in level, unemotional tones. Gillian wrung her hands. "But even so ! Magda didn't kill her, Michael. She couldn't tell she didn't know that June " She halted, faltering into silence. "That June was soon to have a child?" Michael finished her sentence for her. "No. But she knew she loved her husband.
He amused her and kept her thoughts off recent happenings, and for the moment that was all that mattered. It was a glorious morning. The sun blazed like a great golden shield out of a cloudless sky, and hardly a breath of air stirred the foliage of the trees. Magda, to content an insatiable Coppertop, had good-naturally suffered herself to be dragged over the farm.
It was a nice face, Magda decided, with a dogged, squarish jaw that appealed to a certain tenacity of spirit which was one of her own unchildish characteristics, and the keen dark-grey eyes she encountered were so unlike the cold light-grey of her father's that it seemed ridiculous the English language could only supply the one word "grey" to describe things that were so totally dissimilar.
Michael Quarrington's got too much good red blood in his veins to live the life of a hermit. He's a man, thank goodness, not a mystical dreamer like Hugh Vallincourt. And he'll come back to his mate as surely as the sun will rise to-morrow." "I wish I felt as confident as you do." "I wish I could make sure of putting my hand on Magda when he comes," grumbled Lady Arabella.
For an instant it seemed to Magda as though the whole world stood still gripped in a strange, soundless stillness like the catastrophic pause which for an infinitesimal space of time succeeds a bad accident. Then she heard herself saying: "Really? Where did you hear that?" "Oh, there've been several rumours of a beautiful Spaniard whom he has been using as a model.
Just as I thought you would. Another time, perhaps, you'll obey orders." He stood looking down at her with curiously brilliant grey eyes. Magda almost winced under their penetrating glance. She felt as though they could see into her very soul, and she summoned up all her courage to combat the man's strange force. "I'm not used to obeying orders," she said impatiently.
Magda emulated Agag in her progress across the field which intervened between the house and the river, now and then giving vent to a little cry of protest as a particularly prickly thistle or hidden trail of bramble whipped against her bare ankles.
"It would have made no difference if I had received it earlier," he said composedly. "No difference" "None. Because, you see, this letter asking me to go back to Magda is written under a misapprehension. "How? What do you mean?" "I mean that Magda has no further use for me." Gillian leaned forward. "You're wrong," she said tersely "quite wrong." "No." He shook his head. "I'm not blaming her.
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