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asking.’
    ‘But you had a pleasant few days?’ enquired Lady Denby.
    ‘Well enough.’
    ‘We’ve all missed you,’ she declared, adding with coy emphasis, ‘especially
one
of us!’
    Sophie blushed but Rowland avoided looking at her and said he was confoundedly dusty and needed a wash.
    Frank Lawrence also seemed to have enjoyed his excursion . At the first opportunity he drew me to one side and presented me with a little brown paper package.
    ‘To prove I did not forget you while I was away,’ he smiled. ‘You were rather cross with me that day at Normaston, and rightly so. I spoke out of turn, I’m afraid. I sometimes let my tongue run away with me and I always regret it. What I said was not intended to offend. Am I forgiven?’
    ‘Of course, but you shouldn’t have bought me anything. I’m not sure it’s at all proper.’
    ‘Wait until you see what it is.’
    It was a small book, beautifully bound:
Goldsmith’s Essays.
    ‘It’s perfectly in order to give a lady a book. I saw youreading Goldsmith’s
Poems
and thought this an appropriate companion piece.’
    ‘Of course it is. Thank you!’
    Out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of Louisa Thorpe across the room glaring at us both with a venomous expression.
    ‘You couldn’t have pleased me more,’ I said. ‘Perhaps you’ll let me draw your portrait. You know I’m providing likenesses of the party for Lady Denby as a souvenir of our visit.’
    ‘Anything you want, my dear Miss Tyler. If it involves sitting beside you on the sofa I’m only too happy to oblige.’
    He kissed my hand and I smiled and made sure that Mrs Thorpe saw me smile.

    There was only one unusual incident which occurred in the quiet days following the return of the two young men. One night I could not sleep. The stable clock chimed the hours and it was two in the morning when I finally rose and went over to the window. I thought if I enjoyed a few minutes of fresh air it might put me in the mood for sleep.
    It was very quiet but in the country that never means absolute silence. There were distant rustlings and scufflings, the cry of an owl, the scream of some wild creature and then – two shots rang out, one after the other.
    I mentioned this to Sir Ralph the following morning.
    ‘I suppose it was the gamekeepers in the park but I thought I’d better tell you.’
    ‘They’re not supposed to be in the park – they patrol the woods. Though I suppose they might have spotted intruders and fired over their heads a couple of times.’
    ‘I could have been mistaken – not about the shots buttheir origin. It is difficult to tell where sounds come from at night. Perhaps they did come from the woods.’
    ‘I’ll have a word with the fellows if I remember.’ I took this to mean Sir Ralph thought the matter of no consequence. I decided he was right and thought no more about it until later events made the incident assume a sinister significance.

CHAPTER NINE
    The hot weather returned. One afternoon I was strolling by the lake enjoying the pleasures of solitude; sometimes, in a house full of people one longs to escape.
    I sat for a while on a bench overlooking the water where swans and moorhens were gliding about. I opened Goldsmith’s
Poems
and began reading ‘The Deserted Village’.
    ‘You admire Goldsmith?’ said a voice behind me. I turned round to find the hermit looking at me with a quizzical expression.
    ‘Why, yes. Not as much as some others perhaps but—’
    ‘Yes, he has his limitations. I too have been reading Goldsmith.’
    ‘I noticed the book in your cell and found a copy in the library when I realized that some of the poems were unfamiliar to me. There is one, for instance, about a hermit. He looks very like you in the illustration – see!’ I showed him.
    ‘Ah, but I am unlikely to be approached by my lost love in male garb. These things happen only in fiction. Did you know Lady Denby was putting a hermit into her latest novel? She has asked me