‘How are you getting on with Broomie?’ he asked suddenly.

‘I don’t like her!’ said Pamela fiercely.  ‘I shall never like her!’

’Well, that’s awkward,’—­said the boy slowly, ‘because—­’

‘Because what?’

‘Because I believe she means to marry father!’

Pamela laughed angrily.

‘Ah, you’ve found that out too!’

Desmond pulled down the blind again, and they went back to the fire, sitting on the floor beside it, with their arms round each other, as they had been used to do as children.  And then in a low voice, lest any ears in the sleeping house should be, after all, on the alert, he told her what he had seen in the library.  He was rather ashamed of telling her; only there was this queer sense of last words—­of responsibility—­for his sister, which excused it.

Pamela listened despondently.

’Perhaps they’re engaged already!  Well,—­I can tell you this—­if father does marry her, she’ll rule him, and me—­if I give her the chance—­and everybody on the place, with a rod of iron.’

Desmond at first remonstrated.  He had been taken aback by the sudden vision in the library; and Pamela’s letters for some time past had tended to alter his first liking for ‘Broomie’ into a feeling more distrustful and uncertain.  But, after all, Broomie’s record must be remembered.  ’She wouldn’t sign that codicil thing—­she made father climb down about the gates—­and Sir Henry says she’s begun to pull the estate together like anything, and if father will only let her alone for a year or two she’ll make him a rich man.’

‘Oh, I know,’ said Pamela gloomily, ’she’s paid most of the bills already.  When I go into Fallerton now—­everybody—­all the tradesmen are as sweet as sugar.’

‘Well, that’s something to the good, isn’t it?  Don’t be unfair!’

‘I’m not unfair!’ cried Pamela.  ’Don’t you see how she just swallows up everybody’s attention—­how nobody else matters when she’s there!  How, can you expect me to like that—­if she were an archangel—­which she isn’t!’

‘But has she done anything nasty—­anything to bother you?’

’Well, of course, I’m just a cypher when she’s there.  I’m afraid I oughtn’t to mind—­but I do!’

And Pamela, with her hands round her knees, stared into the fire in bitterness of spirit.  She couldn’t explain, even to Desmond, that the inward eye all the time was tormented by two kindred visions—­Arthur in the hall that afternoon, talking war work with Elizabeth with such warm and eager deference, and Arthur on Holme Hill, stretched at Elizabeth’s feet, and bandying classical chaff with her.  And there was a third, still more poignant, of a future in which Elizabeth would be always there, the centre of the picture, mistress of the house, the clever and charming woman, beside whom girls in their teens had no chance.

She was startled out of these reflections by a remark from Desmond.