“He was, yesterday afternoon.  How he coloured up!  He was absolutely natural for the minute.  That can’t often happen.  People who don’t like giving themselves away are thrilling when they do.”

Another yawn came upon her.

“O! dear, I really mustn’t go to sleep.  What a lulling noise you make, you old river!  I don’t think I can get up at six tomorrow.  This hammock is as comfortable as a bed.  ’The young girl reclined in a graceful attitude, her head pillowed on her slender hand, her long dark lashes entangled and resting on her ivory cheek.’  Well, they couldn’t rest anywhere else:  unless they were long enough to rest on her nose.  ’Her—­her breathing was soft and regular . . .’” It became so.  Isabel slept.

Val would rather have owed no gratitude to a man he disliked so much as Hyde.  When Bernard was wheeled away, an interchange of perfunctory civilities was followed by a constrained silence, which Val broke by rising.  “Hyde, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll say five words to Bernard before Barry begins getting him to bed.  There’s a right of way dispute going on that he liked me to keep him posted up in.”

“Do,” said Lawrence vaguely.  He brushed past Val and escaped into the garden.

Lawrence was enjoying his stay at Wanhope, but tonight he felt defrauded, though he knew not why.  He had had an agreeable day.  In the morning Jack Bendish had appeared on horseback and Lawrence had ridden over with him to lunch at Wharton, a sufficiently amusing experience, what with the crabbed high-spirited whims of Jack’s grandfather and the old-fashioned courtesy of Lord Grantchester, and Yvonne’s romantic toilette:  later Laura had joined them and they had played bowls on the famous green:  in the cool of the evening he had strolled home with Laura through the fields.  Dinner too had been amusing in its way, the wines were excellent, the parlour maid waited at table like a deft ghost, and he recognized in Mrs. Fryar an artist who was thrown away alike on Bernard’s devotion to roast beef and Val’s inability to remember what he ate.  Yet Lawrence was left vaguely discontented.

Bernard’s manner to Val had set his teeth on edge.  Bernard could have meant no harm:  no one had ever known the truth except Lawrence and Val, and possibly Dale with such torn shreds of consciousness as H. E. and barbed wire had left him:  but in all innocence Bernard had set the rack to work as deftly as Lawrence could have done it himself.  Lawrence pitied—­no, that was a slip of the mind:  he was not so weak as to pity Stafford, but their intercourse was difficult, genant.