‘Does the idea of this rush engagement scare you, Alison?’ he asked after a moment.

‘Oh, no.’

‘It’s the only way we can manage it, you know. Because we shall have to leave in early November.’ He sounded a little troubled.

‘I know. It doesn’t matter.’

‘Doesn’t it? You make things very easy,’ he said gently. But Alison didn’t think ‘easy’ was quite the word to describe that evening. She felt terribly tired-emotionally tired-and more than once during the evening she found herself wincing uncontrollably because Julian’s tenderness to her was all a pretence.

It was very well done, but it was pretence. It couldn’t be anything else. Only a few hours ago she had seen him white and distraught because another girl had thrown aside his love for her.

And every now and then, like an electric sign flashing out in the night, there flickered across her memory the words she had heard him say to Rosalie that day weeks ago in the library:

‘The girl’s nothing whatever to me. I don’t care two pins about her.’

Once she thought in panic, ‘What have I done? It can’t be anything but terrible, being married to an indifferent Julian, yet feeling as I do. I must have been mad to rush so.crazily into this.’

Then she remembered his saying, ‘You’re a good, brave child.’ And she thought, with a little humble rush of gratitude, that, in a way, she had been allowed to save him.

At the end of the evening, he drew her out into the hall to say good night to her.

‘I shall look in to-morrow and see you then,’ he told her. And that, too, was oddly like the first evening. Only, of course, she hadn’t really seen him for months after he had said that before.

Didn’t he remember? Men were so queerly insensitive, she thought. Or perhaps it was just that she was ridiculously sensitive that evening.

She drew a long breath, and just then he gave a very slight exclamation and stared hard at her upper arm.

‘What have you done to your arm?’

She didn’t say anything. She knew what it was without having to look at the five tiny bruises.

Very lightly he fitted his fingers and thumb against the marks.

‘Did I do that?’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said quickly.

But he looked extraordinarily concerned. She thought he was going to say something. And then, the next moment, he had bent his head and touched her arm very gently with his lips.

‘I’m sorry, my child. That seems very poor gratitude. But thank you for everything.’

His voice was not entirely steady, and he went away after that without even saying good night.

But Alison didn’t notice. She couldn’t have said a word herself. She only stood there with her hand over her arm, as though she would hold the imprint of his first kiss there.

At last, with a little sigh, she turned and went back into the room where the rest of the family were.

The moment she came in, Rosalie turned on her.

‘What do you imagine you’re doing?’ she demanded furiously. ‘Have you no decency at all-snatching at Julian less than ten minutes after he was free?’

Alison pushed back her hair from her forehead with a characteristic gesture of nervousness.

‘I don’t know why you’re complaining, Rosalie. You don’t want Julian. You said so-without much display of the decency you mention. Well, I do want him and’-her voice trembled very slightly-’and he wants me. You’re going to be happy with Rodney Myrton. Why shouldn’t Julian and I be happy too?’

‘And do you really suppose I’m fool enough to believe that Julian really wants you?’ Rosalie’s cold contempt was very hard to stand. ‘You’re just a sort of salve to his injured vanity because-’

‘I’m not discussing that with you,’ Alison interrupted quietly. ‘Julian is my fiancé now, you might remember.’ And, fantastic though the whole situation was, she felt a warm, illogical feeling of pride and tenderness run all through her as she said that.

Rosalie began to speak again, but at this point Uncle Theodore seemed to think it time he took a hand. He turned from something he was saying to his wife and remarked:

‘I think that is enough, Rosalie. You can’t possibly have both young men without committing bigamy, and I am sure you wouldn’t dream of doing anything that would have such unpleasant consequences for yourself. Leave your cousin and her affairs alone. Julian is not your concern any longer. And you would give a more dignified impression if you didn’t show your disappointed spite so clearly.’

His stepdaughter didn’t reply. She gave him a look of intense dislike-which appeared to leave him entirely unmoved-and went out of the room without saying good night even to her mother.

‘Well, Alison’-Alison couldn’t help feeling that in some obscure way her uncle was enjoying all this-’we shan’t have any too much time to prepare for your wedding. But still, we must arrange something very nice for you.’

Alison was so moved at this that she flushed until the tears came into her eyes. But her aunt spoke very sharply.

‘I should think the best thing would be to have absolutely no fuss. She had better be married quietly in a register office.’

‘Certainly not.’ Uncle Theodore was almost amiable for him, and quite determined. ‘That’s no sort of marriage for a young girl. I am sure Alison agrees with me.’

‘I-I’d rather be married in a church,’ Alison said in a low voice.

‘Of course,’ her uncle said. ‘And, as a matter of fact, you’ll make an extremely pretty bride. You shall have things just as you want them.’

‘Oh, Uncle!’ Alison went to him suddenly and hid her face against his arm. ‘You are good to me. I don’t know why.’

Her uncle stroked her hair a little, very much to her surprise, and somewhat to his own, she thought. ‘It’s because you are a good, undemanding child,’ he told her.

‘Really, Theodore.’ Aunt Lydia couldn’t hide her vexed astonishment. ‘You seem a great deal better pleased and more interested about Julian’s engagement to Alison than ever you were when he was to marry Rosalie.’

‘I am,’ her husband said coolly. ‘I imagine Alison is genuinely fond of him, whereas Rosalie was marrying him simply for his money. And, of course,’ he added reflectively, ‘to marry a man for his money is about the most despicable thing any woman can do.’

Alison felt frightened at the expressionless way her uncle looked all over his wife, without appearing to see her. There was something unnerving in this passion of contemptuous dislike which never found expression in words.

But apparently Aunt Lydia was not so sensitive, or else she was a good actress. For after a moment she said with plaintive mildness:

‘Well, I don’t see how we’re going to afford two expensive weddings so close together.’

‘Then Rosalie can wait,’ was the curt reply.That did shake Aunt Lydia.

‘Rosalie-wait’? For Alison? Really, Theodore, I think you’re forgetting that Alison is really no relation of yours at all.’

‘Nor is Rosalie,’ retorted her husband brutally. ‘And, of the two, I would rather spend my money on Alison. She has always seemed to me to be a grateful, docile child, and very eager to please. I have never found Rosalie anything but a grasping, selfish, quite exceptionally disagreeable young person. That is all I have to say about it. And now, Alison, you had better run along to bed.’

Alison thought so too, and, with an impulsive hug for her uncle and a rather embarrassed good night to her aunt, she went away upstairs.

When she woke next morning she lay for quite a few minutes, watching the sunlight streaming in through the open curtains, and wondering why a sense of frightened exhilaration seemed to struggle with a feeling of apprehension.

Then suddenly she remembered.

She snatched her left hand out from under the coverlet. It was quite true. The thick gold of Julian’s signet ring glimmered on her finger.