Betty blushed, and for a fleeting moment Godfrey saw the blushing, dimpling Betty of long ago.

“Rosamund has the utmost contempt for him.  As for me, he never sees me—­I’m always in the kitchen when he comes here.”  She added with a touch of the quiet humour he remembered, “I don’t think Dolly’s in any danger from me!”

“Why are you always in the kitchen, Betty?” he asked.  “Is it really necessary?”

“Yes, it really is necessary,” she answered frankly.  “Father’s got much poorer, and everything’s about a hundred times as dear as it was before the War.  But you mustn’t think that I mind.  I like it in a way—­and it won’t last for ever.  Some of father’s investments are beginning to recover a little even now, and prices are coming down—­”

They had now come back to the garden end of the Long Walk.  “I must go now,” she said.  “Would you like me to send out one of the girls to entertain you?”

He shook his head.  “No, I think I’ll stroll about the village for a bit.”

They both felt as if the first milestone of their new relationship had been set deep in the earth, and both were glad and relieved that it was so.

Radmore walked about a bit, admiring Janet’s autumnal herbaceous borders, and then he remembered a door that he had known of old which led from the big kitchen garden into the road.  If it was open he could step out without walking across the front of the house.

He turned into the walled garden, and walked quickly down a well-kept path past the sun-dial to the door.  It was open.  He walked through it, and then, with a rather guilty feeling—­a feeling he did not care to analyse—­he made his way round the lower half of the village till he reached the outside wall of The Trellis House.

There he hesitated for a few moments, but even while he was hesitating he knew that he would go in.  Before he could turn the handle the door in the garden wall was opened by Enid Crofton herself.  Radmore was surprised to see that she was dressed in a black dress, with the orthodox plain linen collar and cuffs of widowhood.  It altered her strangely.

He was at once disappointed and a little relieved also, to find Jack Tosswill in the garden with her.  But soon the three went indoors, and then, as had often been Mrs. Crofton’s experience with admirers in the past, each man tried to sit the other out.

At last the hostess had to say playfully:—­“I’m afraid I must turn you out now, for I’m expecting my sister-in-law, Miss Crofton.”

And then they both, together, took their departure; Radmore feeling that he had wasted an hour which might have been so very much more profitably spent in going to see some of his old friends among the cottagers.  As to Jack Tosswill, he felt perplexed, and yes, considerably put out and annoyed.  He had been a good deal taken aback to see how close was the acquaintance between Mrs. Crofton and Godfrey Radmore.