“Polite!” said Jean. “Men are absurd. They want a thing, and when it’s offered they carry on like old women. Who is Uncle Hilary?”

“Vicar of St. Augustine’s-inthe-Meads; he has no sense of propriety to speak of.”

“Good! You go up tomorrow, Hubert, and get the licence. We’ll come after you. Where can we stay, Dinny?”

“Diana would have us, I think.”

“That settles it. We’ll have to go round by Lippinghall, for me to get some clothes, and see Dad. I can cut his hair while I’m talking to him; there won’t be any trouble. Alan can come too; we shall want a best man. Dinny, you talk to Hubert.” Left alone with her brother, Dinny said:

“She’s a wonderful girl, Hubert, and far from cracked, really. It’s breathless, but terribly good sense. She’s always been poor, so it won’t make any difference to her in that way.”

“It isn’t that. It’s the feeling of something hanging over me, that’ll hang over her too.”

“It’ll hang over her worse, if you don’t. I really should, dear boy. Father won’t mind. He likes her, and he’d rather you married a girl of breeding and spirit than any amount of money.”

“It doesn’t seem decent—a special licence,” muttered Hubert.

“It’s romantic, and people won’t have a chance to discuss whether you ought to or not; when it’s done they’ll accept it, as they always do.”

“What about Mother?”

“I’ll tell Mother, if you like. I’m sure she won’t really mind—you’re not being fashionable, marrying a chorus girl or anything of that sort. She admires Jean. So do Aunt Em and Uncle Lawrence.”

Hubert’s face cleared.

“I’ll do it. It’s too wonderful. After all, I’ve nothing to be ashamed of.”

He walked up to Dinny, kissed her almost violently, and hurried out. Dinny stayed in the billiard room practising the spot stroke. Behind her matter-of-fact attitude, she was extremely stirred. The embrace she had surprised had been so passionate; the girl was so strange a mixture of feeling and control, of lava and of steel, so masterful and yet so amusingly young. It might be a risk; but Hubert was already a different man because of it. All the same she was fully conscious of inconsistency; for to herself such a sensational departure would not be possible. The giving of her heart would be no rushing affair. As her old Scotch nurse used to say: “Miss Dinny aye knows on hoo many toes a pussy-cat goes.” She was not proud of that ‘sense of humour not devoid of wit which informed and somewhat sterilised all else.’ Indeed, she envied Jean her colourful decision, Alan his direct conviction, Hallorsen’s robust adventurousness. But she had her compensations, and, with a smile breaking her lips apart, went to find her mother.

Lady Cherrell was in her sanctum next to her bedroom, making muslin bags for the leaves of the scented verbena which grew against the house.

“Darling,” said Dinny, “prepare for slight concussion. You remember my saying I wished we could find the perfect girl for Hubert. Well, she’s found; Jean has just proposed to him.”

“Dinny!”

“They’re going to be married offhand by special licence.”

“But—”

“Exactly, darling. So we go up tomorrow, and Jean and I stay with Diana till it’s over. Hubert will tell Father.”

“But, Dinny, really—!”

Dinny came through the barrage of muslin, knelt down and put her arm round her mother.

“I feel exactly like you,” she said, “only different, because after all I didn’t produce him; but, Mother darling, it is all right. Jean is a marvellous creature, and Hubert’s head over ears. It’s done him a lot of good already, and she’ll see to it that he goes ahead, you know.”

“But, Dinny—money?”

“They’re not expecting Dad to do anything. They’ll just be able to manage, and they needn’t have children, you know, till later.”

“I suppose not. It’s terribly sudden. Why a special licence?”

“Intuition,” and, with a squeeze of her mother’s slender body, she added: “Jean has them. Hubert’s position IS awkward, Mother.”

“Yes; I’m scared about it, and I know your father is, though he’s not said much.”

This was as far as either of them would go in disclosure of their uneasiness, and they went into committee on the question of a perch for the adventuring couple.

“But why shouldn’t they live here until things are settled?” said Lady Cherrell.

“They’ll find it more exciting if they have to do their own washing up. The great thing is to keep Hubert’s mind active just now.”

Lady Cherrell sighed. Correspondence, gardening, giving household orders, and sitting on village committees were certainly not exciting, and Condaford would be even less exciting if, like the young, one had none of these distractions.

“Things ARE quiet here,” she admitted.

“And thank God for it,” murmured Dinny; “but I feel Hubert wants the strenuous life just now, and he’ll get it with Jean in London. They might take a workman’s flat. It can’t be for long, you know. So, Mother dear, you’ll not seem to know anything about it this evening, and we shall all know you do. That’ll be so restful for everybody.” And, kissing the rueful smile on her mother’s face, she went away.

Next morning the conspirators were early afoot, Hubert looking, so Jean put it, as though he were ‘riding at a bullfinch’; Dinny resolutely whimsical. Alan had the handy air of a best man in embryo; Jean alone appeared unmoved. They set forth in the Tasburghs’ brown roadster, dropping Hubert at the station and proceeding towards Lippinghall. Jean drove. The other two sat behind.

“Dinny,” said young Tasburgh, “couldn’t WE have a special licence, too?”

“Reduction on taking a quantity. Behave yourself. You will go to sea and forget all about me in a month.”

“Do I look like that?”

Dinny regarded his brown face.

“Well, in spots.”

“Do be serious!”

“I can’t; I keep seeing Jean snipping a lock and saying: ‘Now Dad, bless me or I’ll tonsure you!’ and the Rector answering ‘I—er—nevah—!’ and Jean snipping another lock and saying: ‘That’s all right then, and I must have a hundred a year or off go your eyebrows!’”

“Jean’s a holy terror. Promise me anyway, Dinny, not to marry anyone else?”

“But suppose I met someone I liked terribly, would you wish to blight my young life?”

“Yes.”

“Not so do they answer on the ‘screen.’”

“You’d make a saint swear.”

“But not a naval lieutenant. Which reminds me: Those texts at the head of the fourth column of the ‘Times.’ It struck me this morning what a splendid secret code could be made out of ‘The Song of Solomon,’ or that Psalm about the Leviathan. ‘My beloved is like a young roe’ might mean ‘Eight German battleships in Dover harbour. Come quickly.’ ‘And there is that Leviathan that takes his pastime therein’ could be ‘Tirpirz in command,’ and so on. No one could possibly decipher it unless they had a copy of the code.”

“I’m going to speed,” said Jean, looking back. The speedometer rose rapidly: Forty—forty-five—fifty—fifty-five—!

The sailor’s hand slipped under Dinny’s arm.

“This can’t last, the car will bust. But it’s a tempting bit of road.”

Dinny sat with a fixed smile; she hated being driven really fast, and, when Jean had dropped again to her normal thirty-five, said plaintively:

“Jean, I have a nineteenth century inside.”

At Folwell she leaned forward again: “I don’t want them to see me at Lippinghall. Please go straight to the Rectory and hide me somewhere while you deal with your parent.”

Refuged in the dining-room opposite the portrait of which Jean had spoken, Dinny studied it curiously. Underneath were the words: “1553, Catherine Tastburgh, nйe Fitzherbert, жtate 35; wife of Sir Walter Tastburgh.”

Above the ruff encircling the long neck, that time-yellowed face might truly have been Jean fifteen years hence, the same tapering from the broad cheek-bones to the chin, the same long dark-lashed luring eyes; even the hands, crossed on the stomacher, were the very spit of Jean’s. What had been the history of that strange prototype; did they know it, and would it be repeated by her descendant?