“What else did Eliot say?”

“Oh, he thinks perhaps he might be better at the Farm than up here.  He thinks it’s bad for him sleeping in that room where he was frightened when he was a kid.  He says it all hooks on to that.  What’s more, he says he may go on having these relapses for years.  Any noise or strain or excitement’ll bring them on.  Do you mind his being at the Farm again?”

“Mind?  Of course I don’t.  If I’m to look after him and the land it’ll be very much easier there than here.”

For every night at Colin’s bedtime Anne came up to the Manor.  She slept in the room that was to be Maisie’s.  When Colin screamed she went to him and sat with him till he slept again.  In the morning she went back to the Farm.

She had been doing this for a week now, and Colin was better.

But he didn’t want to go back.  If, he said, Jerrold didn’t mind having him.

Jerrold wanted to know why he didn’t want to go back and Colin told him.

“Hasn’t it occurred to you that I’ve hurt Anne enough without beginning all over again?  All these damned people here think I’m her lover.”

“You can’t help that.  You’re not the only one that’s hurt her.  We must try and make it up to her, that’s all.”

“How are we going to do it?”

“My God!  I don’t know.  I shall begin by cutting the swine who’ve cut her.”

“That’s no good.  She doesn’t care if they do cut her.  She only cares about us.  She’s done everything for us, and among us all we’ve done nothing for her.  Absolutely nothing.  We can’t give her anything.  We haven’t got anything to give her that she wants.”

Jerrold was silent.

Presently he said, “She wants Sutton’s farm.  Sutton’s dying.  I shall give it to her when he’s dead.”

“You think that’ll make up?”

“No, Colin, I don’t.  Supposing we don’t talk about it any more.”

“All right.  I say, when’s Maisie coming home?”

“God only knows.  I don’t.”

He wondered how much Colin knew.

iii

February had gone.  They were in the middle of March, and still Maisie had not come back.

She wrote sweet little letters to him saying she was sorry to be so long away, but her mother wanted her to stay on another week.  When Jerrold wrote asking her to come back (he did this so that he might feel that he had really played the game) she answered that they wouldn’t let her go till she was rested, and she wasn’t quite rested yet.  Jerrold mustn’t imagine she was the least bit ill, only rather tired after the winter’s racketing.  It would be heavenly to see him again.

Then when she was rested her mother got ill and she had to go with her to Torquay.  And at Torquay Maisie stayed on and on.

And Jerrold didn’t imagine she had been the least bit ill, or even very tired, or that Lady Durham was ill.  He preferred to think that Maisie stayed away because she wanted to, because she cared about her people more than she cared about him.  The longer she stayed the more obstinately he thought it.  Here was he, trying to play the game, trying to be decent and keep straight, and there was Maisie leaving him alone with Anne and making it impossible for him.