been thrashed out before; the five minutes while Barry was out of the room fetching Bernard’s indispensable hot-water bottles would give Val ample time to secure Bernard’s consent.—­Laura had scarcely finished putting away her music when Val came back, humming under his breath the jangled tune that echoes night in the streets of Granada.  Laura glanced at Lawrence, who had gone into the garden to smoke and was passing and repassing the open window:  no, he could not hear.  “Well, Val?”

“Let me do that for you, shall I?” said Val, lightly smiling, at her.  “Your ottoman has a heavy lid.”

“Have you spoken to Bernard?”

“I have.”

“And it’s all right?”

“Yes” said Val, deftly flinging diamond-wise a glittering Chinese cloth:  “is that straight?—­that is, for me.  I shan’t take the agency.”

“Val!”

“Bernard agrees with me that the double work would be too heavy.  Of course I should like the money and I’m awfully sorry to disoblige Lord Grantchester and Jack, but one has one’s limitations, and I don’t want to knock up.”

“It is too bad—­too bad of Bernard,”. said Laura, lowering her voice as Lawrence lingered near the window.  “He doesn’t half deserve your goodness to him.”

“Bosh!” said Val laughing.  “Where do these candlesticks go?  In my heart of hearts I’m grateful to him.  I’m a cowardly beggar, Laura, and I was dreading the big financial responsibility.  Oh no, Bernard didn’t put any pressure on me:  simply offered me the choice between Etchingham and Wanhope.”

“They would pay you twice what you get from Bernard.  Oh, Val, I wish you would take it and throw us over!”

“That’s very unkind of you.”

“Is this definite?”

“Quite:  Bernard had thought it well over and made up his mind.  I shouldn’t speak to him about it if I were you.”

“I shan’t.  I couldn’t bear to.”

“Bosh again—­excuse me.  I must go home.  Good-night, dear.”  He held out his hand, wishing, in the repressed way that had become a second nature to him, that Laura would not wring it so warmly and so long.  In the first bitterness of disappointment—­so much the keener for his unlucky confidence to Rowsley—­Val could not stand sympathy.  Not even from Laura?  Least of all from Laura.  He nodded to her with a bright careless smile and went out into the night.

But he had still one more mission to perform before he could go home to break the bad news to Rowsley:  a trying mission under which Val fretted in repressed distaste.  He came up to Lawrence holding out the gold cigarette case.  “You dropped this at our place when you were talking to my sister this afternoon.”

“Did I?” Lawrence slipped it into his pocket.  His manner was perfectly calm.  “Thanks so much.—­I hadn’t missed it.”  He had no fear of having been betrayed, in essentials, by Isabel.

“I don’t want to offend you,” Val continued with his direct simplicity of manner, “but perhaps you hardly realize how young my sister is.”