‘What was all the nice bright colour for, Allie? Was it for me – or had the character who looked as if he might be a spiv been annoying you?’

Even in the pale greenish light of the alcove the return of the nice bright colour was discernible.

‘Nicky, he’s dreadful! And he’s the other person who wants to buy The Lodge – the one who says he will always go a hundred pounds better than Mr Blount. He doesn’t look as if he’s got a lot of money, does he?’

‘Millionaires have been known to go about in rags.’

‘But they’re not rags – that’s just it. They’re quite new and quite dreadful.’

‘He might have won a pile on the pools, or he might have put a possibly tattered shirt on a horse. Or he might be the enterprising type of footpad who rustles bullion on its way from post offices and banks – I gather there’s quite an opening in that direction for a bright young man. Those are the only three ways I can think of in which you can put away any money nowadays – the Chancellor sees to that. I think there should be an Association for making burglars pay income tax. At present the harder you work, the less you earn and the more you pay. It’s a fascinating topic, but as a matter of fact there’s something else I want to talk about.’

A waitress brought their coffee and set it down on a shiny green table. When she had gone away again Nicholas Carey said,

‘What I want to talk about is our getting married. What about it, Allie?’

She had known that it was coming. She hadn’t known just how it would make her feel. She didn’t know quite how she did feel, but you couldn’t take the most important step of your life unless you did know how you felt about it. She looked at him in a soft, distressed kind of way and said,

‘Oh, Nicky, I don’t know – don’t rush me…’

Those narrow dark eyebrows of his went up.

‘Do you get the idea that we are rushing our affairs? After seven years? One can believe most things if one tries hard enough, but I can’t manage that one.’

She went on looking at him without any change of expression.

‘I feel as if we were on a hill – and it’s steep. We’ve started to run down it and it keeps on getting steeper – we’re running faster and faster and we can’t see where we’re going – we can’t see the bottom of the hill.’

He said,

‘Wake up, Allie! Don’t you see the way you’re feeling is just what everyone does feel when they’ve been bullied within an inch of their lives or in prison for years, and then quite suddenly there’s an open door in front of them and they are free to walk out? They have only got to take that one step and shut the door behind them, and they are afraid to do it. It’s the common reaction – they think it’s a trap – they think they’ll be caught and brought back again. And they’ve been conditioned to being at someone else’s orders – they can’t face having to take their own decisions and act on their own initiative. Wake up and realize that there’s nothing on earth to stop you from walking out and marrying me!’

‘Suppose I did, and suppose she died…’

‘Suppose she didn’t do anything of the sort.’

‘She might…’

He said,

‘Look here, Allie, you can’t tell me anything about your mother that I don’t know. She was much younger than your father, and she was pretty and he spoiled her. Incidentally, he knew perfectly well what she was like. He tied up the money so that she couldn’t touch it and he left the house to you. Outside his job he let her have her own way. And when he died you took over, only you haven’t got a job to escape into. There isn’t one turn or twist in the game of getting her own way that she hasn’t got at her fingertips, and as long as she has anything to gain by it she’ll use them all.’ He said the last words over again with a heavy emphasis on them – ‘As long as she has anything to gain. But once we are married, Allie, the game will be out of her hands and she’ll know it. If she goes on and throws fits she will only be hurting herself, and as I’ve said before, she is a great deal too fond of herself to do that.’

Althea listened. She hadn’t looked away. He could see right down into her eyes. The green hangings made them look very green indeed, and the colour had gone out of her face and left her pale. They ought to have run away together seven years ago. They ought never to have let Winifred Graham drive them apart. It wasn’t going to happen again. He laughed and said,

‘I’ve got a present for you, my sweet. Wait a minute – it’s in my wallet.’

He produced the leather case, opened it, took out a paper, and spread it in front of her on the shiny green table.

‘Marriage licence.’ He dipped into his waistcoat pocket. A screw of tissue paper came up and was unwrapped. A plain gold ring dropped down upon the licence. ‘Wedding ring,’ he said. ‘Just try it on and see if it fits.’

MISS SILVER PUT down the letter which she had been reading and turned to the telephone. Since she was sitting at her writing-table, the receiver was conveniently to her hand. She lifted it and heard her own name spoken.

‘Is that Miss Maud Silver?’

‘Miss Silver speaking.’

The voice said in rather a hesitating manner,

‘I wonder if I could come and see you. Perhaps you will remember talking to me at the Justices’ the other day. I am Sophy’s friend, Althea Graham. You gave me one of your cards…’

‘Oh, yes. What can I do to help you?’

Althea said, ‘I don’t know.’ And then, ‘At least – I hope you don’t mind my troubling you, but would you let me come and see you?’

Miss Silver said, ‘Certainly.’

‘At once – today? I – I’m in town – just round the corner. Would it be all right for me to came now?’

‘It would be quite all right.’

Miss Silver resumed the letter which she had put down in order to answer the telephone. By one of those coincidences which really do happen, it was from her nephew Jim Silver’s wife Dorothy – the same Dorothy Silver whom Sophy Justice had befriended four years ago in Barbados. Jim Silver’s work as an engineer had taken him to the island, and his wife had accompanied him, taking with her what was then her only child, a little boy born after ten years of marriage. Her illness in Barbados had fortunately proved of short duration, and on her return a few months later a little girl was added to the family. Since then there had been twins, a boy and a girl, just as in Sophy’s case.

Dorothy’s letter was full of what were to Miss Silver the most interesting particulars about all these children. Jamie was growing so very like his father. Jenny knew all her letters though she wouldn’t be four until after Christmas. Teddy and Tina were like a couple of puppies – under your feet all the time, but so sweet. It was really delightful to get such a happy letter. She placed it on the left of her blotting-pad to be answered at leisure and rose to greet Althea Graham.

If she had not already committed herself on the telephone Althea might have reached Montague Mansions, but she would probably not have gone up in the small self-operated lift or have rung the bell of No. 15. Even as she stood with her finger on the button it was all she could do not to turn and run away down the stairs. That isn’t the sort of thing you do of course – not if you have been nicely brought up, so she didn’t do it.

The door opened and Miss Silver’s invaluable Hannah Meadows stood there, a comfortable rosy person with a country air about her. Althea was not the first of Miss Silver’s clients to find reassurance in her aspect, and she would not be the last.

Althea came into Miss Silver’s room with its workmanlike table, its carpet and curtains in the shade which used to be called peacock-blue and which is now rather oddly known as petrol. There were chairs with curly walnut frames and the spreading laps designed to accommodate skirts of the crinoline period and upholstered in the same material as the curtains. There was a yellow walnut bookcase, there were little tables. There was a perfect host of photographs on the tables, on the bookcase, on the mantelpiece, framed in leather, in silver, in silver filigree on plush. A great many of them were pictures of young men and girls, and of the children who might never have been born if Miss Silver had not stepped in to disentangle the net in which innocent feet had been caught. From three of the walls, framed in yellow maple, reproductions of famous Victorian pictures, Hope, The Black Brunswicker, and The Stag at Bay, looked down upon the scene.