Bill looked up quickly.  They were close to Jallands now, an old thatched farmhouse which, after centuries of sleep, had woken up to a new world, and had forthwith sprouted wings; wings, however, of so discreet a growth that they had not brought with them any obvious change of character, and Jallands even with a bathroom was still Jallands.  To the outward view, at any rate.  Inside, it was more clearly Mrs. Norbury’s.

“Yes Angela Norbury,” murmured Bill.  “Not bad-looking, is she?”

The girl who stood by the little white gate of Jallands was something more than “not bad-looking,” but in this matter Bill was keeping his superlatives for another.  In Bill’s eyes she must be judged, and condemned, by all that distinguished her from Betty Calladine.  To Antony, unhampered by these standards of comparison, she seemed, quite simply, beautiful.

“Cayley asked us to bring a letter along,” explained Bill, when the necessary handshakings and introductions were over.  “Here you are.”

“You will tell him, won’t you, how dreadfully sorry I am about what has happened?  It seems so hopeless to say anything; so hopeless even to believe it.  If it is true what we’ve heard.”

Bill repeated the outline of events of yesterday.

“Yes ....  And Mr. Ablett hasn’t been found yet?” She shook her head in distress.  “It still seems to have happened to somebody else; somebody we didn’t know at all.”  Then, with a sudden grave smile which included both of them, “But you must come and have some tea.”

“It’s awfully decent of you,” said Bill awkwardly, “but we—­er—­”

“You will, won’t you?” she said to Antony.

“Thank you very much.”

Mrs. Norbury was delighted to see them, as she always was to see any man in her house who came up to the necessary standard of eligibility.  When her life-work was completed, and summed up in those beautiful words:  “A marriage has been arranged, and will shortly take place, between Angela, daughter of the late John Norbury ....” then she would utter a grateful Nunc dimittis and depart in peace to a better world, if Heaven insisted, but preferably to her new son-in-law’s more dignified establishment.  For there was no doubt that eligibility meant not only eligibility as a husband.

But it was not as “eligibles” that the visitors from the Red House were received with such eagerness to-day, and even if her special smile for “possibles” was there, it was instinctive rather than reasoned.  All that she wanted at this moment was news—­news of Mark.  For she was bringing it off at last; and, if the engagement columns of the “Morning Post” were preceded, as in the case of its obituary columns, by a premonitory bulletin, the announcement of yesterday would have cried triumphantly to the world, or to such part of the world as mattered:  “A marriage has very nearly been arranged (by Mrs. Norbury), and will certainly take place, between Angela, only daughter of the late John Norbury, and—­Mark Ablett of the Red House.”  And, coming across it on his way to the sporting page, Bill would have been surprised.  For he had thought that, if anybody, it was Cayley.