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she’ll have done a sketch and hopes to feel less fussed. Damned inconvenient hour but there you are. I’ll cut dinner, darling, and try the evening rise. Ask them to leave supper for me, will you, and apologies to Kitty.”
    “O.K.,” Rose said with forced airiness. “And, of course,” she added, “there’s the further difficulty of Mark’s papa.”
    “George.”
    “Yes, indeed, George. Well, we know he’s not exactly as bright as sixpence, don’t we, but all the same he
is
Mark’s papa, and he’s cutting up most awfully rough and…”
    Rose caught back her breath, her lips trembled, and her eyes filled with tears. She launched herself into her father’s arms and burst into a flood of tears. “What’s the use,” poor Rose sobbed, “of being a brave little woman? I’m not in the least brave. When Mark asked me to marry him, I said I wouldn’t because of you and there I was, so miserable that when he asked me again I said I would. And now, when we’re so desperately in love, this happens. We have to do them this really frightful injury. Mark says of course they must take it and it won’t make any difference to
us,
but of course it
will,
and how can I bear to be married to Mark and know how his people feel about you when next to Mark, my darling, darling Daddy, I love you best in the world? And
his
father,” Rose wept, “
his
father says that if Mark marries me, he’ll never forgive him and that they’ll do a sort of Montague and Capulet thing at us and, darling, it wouldn’t be much fun for Mark and me, would it, to be star-crossed lovers?”
    “My poor baby,” murmured the agitated and sentimental Colonel, “my poor baby!” And he administered a number of unintentionally hard thumps between his daughter’s shoulder blades.
    “It’s so many people’s happiness,” Rose sobbed. “It’s all of us.”
    Her father dabbed at her eyes with his own handkerchief, kissed her and put her aside. In his turn he went over to the window and looked down at Bottom Bridge and up at the roofs of Nunspardon. There were no figures in view on the golf course.
    “You know, Rose,” the Colonel said in a changed voice, “I don’t carry the whole responsibility. There is a final decision to be made, and mine must rest upon it. Don’t hold out too many hopes, my darling, but I suppose there is a chance. I’ve time to get it over before I talk to Lady Lacklander, and indeed I suppose I should. There’s nothing to be gained by any further delay. I’ll go now.”
    He went to his desk, unlocked a drawer and took out an envelope.
    Rose said, “Does Kitty…?”
    “Oh, yes,” the Colonel said. “She knows.”
    “Did you tell her, Daddy?”
    The Colonel had already gone to the door. Without turning his head and with an air too casual to be convincing, he said, “O, no. No. She arranged to play a round of golf with George, and I imagine he elected to tell her. He’s a fearful old gas-bag is George.”
    “She’s playing now, isn’t she?”
    “Is she? Yes,” said the Colonel, “I believe she is. He came to fetch her, I think. It’s good for her to get out.”
    “Yes, rather,” Rose agreed.
    Her father went out to call on Mr. Octavius Danberry-Phinn. He took his fishing gear with him as he intended to go straight on to his meeting with Lady Lacklander and to ease his troubled mind afterwards with the evening rise. He also took his spaniel Skip, who was trained to good behaviour when he accompanied his master to the trout stream.
    Lady Lacklander consulted the diamond-encrusted watch which was pinned to her tremendous bosom and discovered that it was now seven o’clock. She had been painting for half an hour and an all-too-familiar phenomenon had emerged from her efforts.
    “It’s a curious thing,” she meditated, “that a woman of my character and determination should produce such a puny affair. However, it’s got me in better trim for Maurice Cartarette, and that’s a damn’ good thing. An