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funny but would be uncommonly uncomfortable as well. So he made no other comment than:
    “It should be a good afternoon for a ride!” and had proof of what Judith’s intentions had been by the disappointment in her expressive face.
    Desmond, for all her profession of pleasure at his appearance, found her an extremely silent companion that afternoon.
     
    Linda heard from her friends in Sussex. They gave her all the information she had asked for and more besides. For instance, that he was not engaged and, so far as they knew, was not likely to be.
    Linda folded the letter up and smiled to herself as she put it safely away in one of her private drawers to which she knew there was no likelihood of Desmond going. She had no intention whatever of sharing her information with anyone yet. She wanted to use it herself to the best advantage, and she had no desire to see it explode prematurely.
    Rather to her surprise, a few days later, she and Desmond had an invitation to dine at Windygates. There had been very little entertaining done by Judith’s father for many years, and her and Desmond’s visits there had been informal and latterly infrequent. They were both usually too tired to want to turn out in the evening. But this was rather different. True, knowing that Desmond would be eager to accept, she pretended to be rather reluctant, but in the end she gave way.
    “It means dressing, though!” she reminded him. “Mr. Bellairs is going to be there, and he still clings to convention!”
    “Oh well, only dinner jacket,” Desmond commented. “Now if it were a boiled shirt I might jib, this weather!”
    “Oh, I wasn’t thinking about you!” Linda said with sisterly candour. “I was wondering what on earth I’ve got that is fit to wear! You’re lucky. Men’s clothes never date. Ours do! And they wear out more quickly.”
    “Wear that red thing of yours,” Desmond suggested. “I’ve always liked you in that!”
    Linda cast despairing eyes to the ceiling.
    “Don’t you know that that is one of the remarks you should never make to a woman?” she asked. “It is as good as calling it an old rag!”
    Desmond laughed.
    “I suppose, whatever a woman wears, a mere man ought to exclaim that he has never seen her look more marvellous and why has she never let him see that dress before!”
    “Well, it would be an improvement,” Linda admitted, her mind more concerned with her own dress than with abstract discussions like this. “Of course, she might tell you that it just showed you never really noticed what she wore and she’d had it for years!”
    Desmond groaned.
    “I give up!” he declared.
    But if Linda was concerned about what to wear, Judith had no such problems. Dress had never interested her very much. She liked to look neat and tidy, but style and cut meant absolutely nothing to her. Consequently, there was only one dress in her wardrobe that she could wear on such an occasion, and it was utterly uninspired. Not only was the material unexciting and the colour, a tired blue, utterly unsuitable, but somehow or other the slim loveliness of her figure was masked and blurred. And, as she squirmed and wriggled to reach all the down-the-back buttons that fastened it, she grimaced at her reflection and wished that Mr. Bellairs wasn’t such a stickler for customs that were long since out of date. It was not that she cared how she looked, but it was all such a nuisance. She would much rather have worn her usual work-a-day breeches or one of the plain cotton frocks that she wore most evenings in the summer.
    Linda’s toilette that night took such a long time that Desmond began to shout warnings up the narrow, twisted staircase. And when at last his sister did appear, he gave an expressive whistle.
    “Got up to kill, aren’t you?” he suggested. Linda shrugged her shoulders. Fortunately for her, Mrs. Enstone had made almost a hobby of buying up lengths of beautiful materials that caught her eye, and necessity had