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was one to mince his words, either. The result was another dreadful row, and she left that night, without a word to anyone. There was a note for her grandfather, that was all. Nothing for Con. She just said she wasn’t coming back. Of course the old man was too stubborn and furious even to try and find her, and persuade her, and he forbade Con to try either. Con did what he could, quietly, but there was no trace. Then, a month later, her grandfather got a note, post-marked New York. It just said she was quite safe, had got a job with friends, and she wasn’t ever coming back to England again. After that there was nothing until three years later someone sent Mr Winslow a cutting from a Los Angeles paper describing an accident in which an express had run into a bus at some country crossing, and a lot of people had been killed. One of them was a “Miss Anna Winslow” of no given address, who’d been staying at some boarding-house in the city, and who was thought to be English. We made enquiries, and they were all negative. It could have been Annabel. It would certainly be enough, with the long absence, to allow us to presume her dead. After all this time, she must be; or else she really isn’t ever coming back, which amounts to the same thing, in the end.’ She paused. ‘That’s all.’
    I turned my head. ‘And you? Where do you come in?’
    â€˜After she’d gone,’ said Lisa Dermott, ‘Con remembered me.’
    She said it quite simply. There was no hint of self-pity or complaint in the soft, flattened voice. I looked down at her, sitting stolid and unattractive in the old basket chair, and said gently: ‘He got Mr Winslow to send for you?’
    She nodded. ‘Someone had to run the house, and it seemed too good a chance to miss. But even with the two of us there, doing all that we do, it’s not the slightest use.’
    The impulse of pity that had stirred in me, died without a pang. I had a sudden vivid picture of the two of them, camped there at Whitescar, hammering home their claims, Con with his charm and industry, Lisa with her polish and her apple pies . . . She had called it ‘unfair’, and perhaps it was; certainly one must admit they had a right to a point of view. But then so had Matthew Winslow.
    â€˜You see,’ she said, ‘how unjust it all is? You do see that, don’t you?’
    â€˜Yes, I see. But I still don’t see what you think I can do about it! You want me to go to Whitescar, and somehow or other that is going to help Con to become the heir, and owner. How?’
    I had left the window as I spoke, and come forward to the table again. I saw that fugitive look of excitement touch her face once more as she leaned towards me, looking up under the brim of the brown hat.
    â€˜You’re interested now, aren’t you? I thought you would be, when you heard a bit more.’
    â€˜I’m not. You’ve got me wrong. I was interested in your story, I admit, but that was because I think your brother may be right when he says I must come originally from some branch of the same family. But I never said I was interested in your proposition! I’m not! I told you what I thought about it! It’s a crazy idea straight out of nineteenth-century romance, long-lost heirs and missing wills and – and all that drivel!’ I found that I was speaking roughly, almost angrily, and made myself smile at her, adding, mildly enough: ‘You’ll be telling me next that Annabel had a strawberry-mark—’
    I stopped. Her hand had moved, quickly, to the telephone directory on the table beside her. I saw, then, that I had shut it over a pencil which still lay between the leaves.
    The book fell open under her hand, at the page headed ‘ Wilson – Winthorpe ’. She looked at it without expression. Then her blunt, well-kept finger moved down towards the foot of the second column, and stopped