Alison forbore to ask if she would have found it any less awkward at any other time.

‘I’ll do them for you, shall I?’ she offered.

‘I wish you would.’ Her aunt immediately gave up her thin pretence of examining them herself. Then, after a pause, she added, ‘I suppose I mustn’t expect much help from you, now that you don’t feel it necessary to study me any longer.’

‘How she does judge other people by herself,’ thought Alison. ‘No wonder Uncle Theodore despises her.’

But aloud she said, ‘I don’t imagine I shall be so busy as all that, Aunt Lydia. I’ll still do what I can to help you, of course.’

Her aunt appeared satisfied with that, although she didn’t seem to think that any thanks were called for.

Presently Alison looked up and said, ‘Do you think Audrey would like to be my bridesmaid?’

‘I suppose so.’ Her aunt sounded completely indifferent. ‘I don’t see that it matters much in any case. The whole thing is rather a farce, isn’t it?’

Alison bit her lip angrily.

‘You don’t expect me to agree with that, I suppose?’ she said curtly, without looking up.

‘Well, I don’t know what else one can think. Everyone knows that until eight o’clock yesterday evening Julian was infatuatedly in love with Rosalie. By nine he appears to have proposed to you-or you to him, I really can’t imagine which-and we’re all asked to regard the affair as perfectly normal.’

Alison was completely silent, her pen motionless in her hand. Put like that, in her aunt’s tone of slightly plaintive ridicule, the whole thing sounded absurd and hollow.

Was that how it was going to seem to Julian when he had had time to cool down and regard the whole situation calmly?

She stared unseeingly at the sheet of notepaper in front of her. And then, quite a long time afterwards, when it seemed that her aunt had nothing to add to her crushing analysis, Alison slowly went on writing. But she was not very sure what she was writing about.

It took more than an hour of patient work to finish all that Aunt Lydia wanted done, and then Alison went upstairs to her own room once more.

Sitting on the side of the bed, she tried to review the whole situation quite dispassionately.

In the first impulse of that crazy proposal they had both agreed that they had nothing to lose. She saw now that that was not strictly true. To refuse to take dangerous chances always meant that you retained a certain negative sense of safety and peace of mind.

The moment you embarked on anything like this fantastic arrangement you said good-bye to any security. Just now she was feeling like someone who had started to cross a raging torrent by means of a single-plank bridge. She had lost her nerve half-way, and now she didn’t know which was more impossible-to go forward or to go back.

Alison sighed and ruffled up her hair worriedly.

‘If only Aunt Lydia wouldn’t frighten me so much,’ she murmured.

That evening, she dressed with the greatest care, for she had an odd, proud little feeling that she must not let Julian down in front of his sophisticated friends. After all, it was the first time he was showing her off.

She put on the amber frock which had already seen her through such extraordinary adventures, and she brushed her hair until it looked like a gold silk cap.

Then she looked in the mirror, and saw that there was no need to put even the slightest touch of colour on her lips. They were soft and red and faintly damp like a child’s; and her eyes, wide and dark and velvety, were rather like a child’s too.

She was ready when Julian arrived, which seemed to amuse him a little.

‘You are a model of punctuality, Alison,’ he remarked. And she remembered that probably Rosalie considered it good policy to keep a man waiting indefinitely.

‘Well, I hate having to wait myself,’ Alison said candidly, ‘so I always take it that other people hate it too.’

‘A very proper and Victorian point of view,’ commented Julian, smiling, and he glanced at the amber dress as though he certainly had not seen it last night.

Alison’s small reserve of security deserted her.

‘Do you mean I look too Victorian in this?’ she asked nervously.

‘You look sweet,’ he told her carelessly. And, putting her evening coat round her, he took her out to the car.

To her surprise, there was a chauffeur to drive, that evening.

I didn’t know you had a chauffeur,’ she said involuntarily.

‘No? I have him mostly for long-distance driving. But sometimes in the evening, if I don’t want to be bothered with the car, he comes along. Why?’

‘Oh, nothing. I just wondered. Julian?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you very-I mean, do we have to keep up a good deal of social style when we-when we are married?’

He looked surprised.

‘I’m a pretty rich man, if that’s what you mean. I don’t know that I keep up very much style, as you call it, here. But of course out there there will be a big house to run, and a good many servants to look after, and a lot of entertaining to do. It’s just the natural thing there; part of the life, you know.’ And he smiled a little, as though the thought of it gave him pleasure.

‘And you really love the life, and want to get back?’

‘Of course, Alison.’ He sounded a trifle impatient, ‘That’s the sole reason for my side of this arrangement, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, of course.’

She spoke quickly, and hoped he didn’t notice how her colour had risen.

He might have noticed her colour and her silence, but just then the car drew up outside the floodlit portico of the Mirabelle, and he handed her out without comment.

There were a good many people in the spacious lounge, with its warm golden walls and its concealed lighting, but Simon and Jennifer Langtoft were not easy to overlook. They came forward at once, Jennifer in a frock of geranium red which owed nothing of its effect to ornament and everything to perfection of cut.

‘She’s the most finished person I’ve ever seen,’ thought Alison, and hoped that she herself didn’t look too much like a schoolgirl out for a treat.

But it didn’t seem to be any part of Jennifer’s social technique to make other people uncomfortable. She shook hands quite warmly and said:

‘I thought Julian told me you wanted advice about choosing your trousseau. But it looks to me as though you know all about what suits you already.’

‘She doesn’t want advice. She wants moral support.’ That was Simon Langtoft, speaking in a rather slow, lazy voice. ‘Then when she presents the bills to her father, or whatever poor wretch has the privilege of paying, she can justify everything by saying, "Well, Jennifer Langtoft says it’s absolutely necessary." Am I right?’ And he smiled straight into Alison’s eyes before he bent his head and lightly kissed her hand.

Alison had never had anyone kiss her hand before, and she found it rather thrilling and quite astonishingly gratifying. It would have seemed theatrical from most men, she supposed, but it was quite right as Simon did it.

‘No, I wasn’t really arguing it that way,’ she told him with a smile. ‘It’s only that I’ve never had to choose a big wardrobe before, and if Miss Langtoft doesn’t mind-’

‘I don’t mind in the least,’ Jennifer assured her. ‘I think the next best thing to buying expensive clothes yourself is to watch someone else being extravagant.’

‘No getting her into bad ways, Jennifer,’ warned Julian. ‘Don’t forget that I shall be the husband and universal provider afterwards.’

‘I shall not forget,’ Jennifer said.

She spoke banteringly, just as the two men had, but for some reason the way she said those words-’I shall not forget-reminded Alison forcibly of what Aunt Lydia had said. And for a moment she felt extremely uncomfortable.

As they came into the more brilliantly lighted restaurant, Alison had a better opportunity of studying the brother and sister. She had thought at first they had no single feature in common, but now she saw that they were alike in one thing -their extraordinarily dark eyes, which were not merely dark brown, but an absolutely genuine black. Their intensity gave a tremendous arresting character’ to both faces.