‘Here you are.’

‘Thank you.’ Audrey drank with convincing eagerness. ‘Was Julian there?’ she asked suddenly.

‘Yes.’

‘I like Julian.’ There was no mistaking Audrey’s approval. ‘Did you?’

‘He seemed very nice,’ Alison agreed carefully.

‘He is. Much too nice for Rosalie,’ said Rosalie’s young stepsister. But Alison refused to take up this challenge, and so she asked, between gradually lengthening sips, ‘Did you dance with him?’

‘Yes.’

‘How many times?’

‘Oh, several times,’ Alison said carelessly.

‘Several times?’ The pretence of thirst was abruptly abandoned. ‘I bet Rosalie was wild, wasn’t she?’

‘Don’t be silly, Audrey.’ Alison spoke severely. ‘I imagine Mr. Tyndrum was kind enough to feel some social responsibility as-a-as a sort of relation.’

‘I don’t imagine anything of the kind,’ retorted Audrey, reluctantly yielding up the empty glass to Alison’s firm hand. ‘They had an awful row this afternoon, and for once he got his own back on her, instead of the other way round.’

Alison was half-way across the room, the glass in her hand. She stopped suddenly and said in a funny, stifled little voice, ‘What are you talking about?’

‘It’s always happening,’ Audrey said, lying down and pulling the clothes over her. ‘Rosalie loves making rows because it makes her feel important. Then she flirts with someone else, and Julian’s silly enough to be miserable and jealous, so that in the end it’s he who does all the apologising. I’m jolly glad he turned the tables this time and made a fuss of another girl.’

For a second Alison felt unable to move. Then she slowly put down the glass as though it were very heavy.

‘Good night, Audrey. Go to sleep now.’ She went towards the door, hardly hearing the little girl’s sleepy ‘Good night’ in reply. Very quietly she closed the door behind her.

It was quite a short distance to her own room really, but somehow it seemed a long way to carry anything so heavy as her heart.

She didn’t put on the light at first, for the curtains were still drawn back, and the moon shone right into the room. She went slowly over to the window, and stood staring out at the cold black and silver of the moonlit square.

He had just used her to make Rosalie jealous.

Alison leant her forehead against the window, pressed it there until she could feel the stinging, icy glass through her thick fringe.

How easy it was to make a fool of yourself when you were lonely! You snatched at the faintest bit of kindness and read all sorts of things into it.

A dozen little memories came back to hurt her. He’d said it was easy to be kind to her. It had seemed such a sweet compliment at the time, and had made her so happy. Now she saw he had probably been thinking that anyone so silly as herself simplified his plan of campaign.

She winced sharply. He had actually used that word himself, and had smiled as he said it-while she had been silly enough to suppose it had been something on her own behalf.

And then she had assured him clumsily that he must not bother to come to the house because of her. No wonder he had looked astonished and chilly!

‘Oh, whatever sort of a fool must he think me?’ muttered Alison wretchedly as she turned away from the window, chilled and a little stiff: ‘Anyway’-she pressed her unsteady lips together angrily-’I don’t think much of him either. It was a beastly thing to do.’

And she kept up her anger against him all the while she was undressing.

She expected to lie awake, anxious and tormented with worry. But the moment her head was on the pillow she fell asleep-to dream of Julian Tyndrum.

There was a tremendous reception being held somewhere, and Aunt Lydia kept on saying, ‘You can’t possibly go. You’ve nothing decent to wear, and everybody would be ashamed of you.’

And then Julian was there, and he said in his careless, arrogant fashion, ‘Oh, yes, she can. I’ll put the cloak of my protection round her and then she can go.’ And, to Alison’s astonishment, the cloak was a real one-long and magnificent and lined with fur, like the cloak of a Victorian hero.

She snuggled into its wonderful folds, and the fur was so soft and enveloping that it warmed her right through to her very heart. And that was the end of the dream, because she forgot all about going to the reception in the happiness of wearing Julian’s cloak.

The next day, any doubts left on the subject of Alison’s exact position in the household began to be cleared up. She breakfasted with the twins, went out with the twins in the morning, lunched with the twins. Theoretically the after(d)noon was to be her own-to be spent, apparently, either in her own room or else somewhere vaguely described as ‘out’.

On this occasion, however, her aunt came into the schoolroom directly after lunch and said, ‘Alison, my dear, I wonder if you’d come and give me a hand with my correspondence. It’s piled up so much lately. And there arc one or two’ small items of shopping you can do for me. I expect you will be glad of something to do.’

Alison came quite willingly. Her aunt had not done a single thing to make her feel happy or at home since she came into the house. But, on the other hand, Uncle Theodore had maintained her for nearly three years, and he was Aunt Lydia ’s husband. She had an uncomfortable suspicion that duty rather than humanity had moved him to do so, but that didn’t lessen her anxiety to show her gratitude.

In addition-though this, of course, was not at all important-was the feeling at the back of her mind that she would rather be out of the way if Julian called. She didn’t want to see him. She felt passionately that she never wanted to see him again. It wasn’t only that she was so embarrassed as she remembered last evening. She felt angry, too, and quite unbearably hurt.

So she sat in her aunt’s little study and conscientiously wrote answers to invitations, notes about accounts, and a few-a very few-letters to accompany cheques for charity.

At four o’clock her aunt looked in and said, ‘You had better go out now, Alison, or you won’t be back in time for schoolroom tea at five. You can finish those to-morrow.’

Alison was not too simple to see that a good many to-morrows of this sort stretched in front of her. But she did what she was told, thankful to escape from the house.

It was a blowy day in early April, but strangely warm after the chill of yesterday, and insensibly Alison felt her spirits rise. It had been rather stupid of her really to keep on trying to analyse people’s actions and attribute this and that motive to them.

Julian might have had some faint idea of showing Rosalie she couldn’t have things all her own way, but, undoubtedly too, he had wanted to be kind to her. He’d shown it in a dozen different ways. She was rather guiltily surprised to find that her thoughts had come back to him, but perhaps it was only natural since he was the only one to show the slightest personal concern about her welfare since she had arrived.

After all, if Julian liked to offer her some degree of friendship she would be more than glad to have it. But, beyond that, her cousin’s fiancé really had nothing to do with her.

Her business was to see that she attended to her aunt’s commissions as carefully and dutifully as possible, and reached home in time for schoolroom tea, as Aunt Lydia had said.

It was odd, but not at all unpleasant, to be sauntering along the streets and in and out of shops, with no one’s wishes but her own to consult until five o’clock.

For the first time she felt she had really left schooldays definitely behind her. Even Aunt Lydia ’s little spiteful pretence couldn’t make her into a schoolgirl again. She was an individual, with a life of her own before her-no longer one of a class.

It was impossible not to feel rather elated at the thought, and, in between carefully carrying out her aunt’s various instructions, Alison allowed her thoughts to wander a little to the possible future.