“Yes, he has been here the last three weeks painting my portrait.  It’s for you, the portrait.  I thought you’d like to have it when you haven’t got the original any longer.”

Magda turned to her suddenly, her affection for her godmother alertly apprehensive.

“What do you mean?” she said anxiously.  “You’re—­you’re not ill, Marraine?”

“Ill?  No.  But I’m over seventy.  And after seventy you’ve had your allotted span, you know.  Anything beyond that’s an extra.  And whether fate gives me a bit more rope or not, I’ve nothing to grumble at.  I’ve lived, not vegetated—­and I’ve had a very good time, too.”  She paused, then added slowly:  “Though I’ve missed the best.”

Magda slipped her hand into the old woman’s thin, wrinkled one with a quick gesture of understanding, and a little sympathetic silence fell between them.

“Then you’ll find the hanging-room for the portrait at Friars’ Holm?” queried Lady Arabella, breaking it at last in practical tones.

“You know we’d love to have it,” replied Magda warmly.  In a studiously casual voice she pursued:  “By the way, does Mr. Quarrington know I’m here?”

Lady Arabella nodded.  Secretly she was congratulating herself on having successfully tided over the awkwardness of explaining Michael’s presence at the Hermitage.  She had been somewhat apprehensive as to how Magda would take it.  It was quite on the cards that she might have ordered her car round again and driven straight back to London!

But she had accepted the fact with apparent composure—­one’s mental states, fortunately, being invisible to the curious eyes of the outside world!—­and Lady Arabella felt proportionately relieved.  Nor had Quarrington himself evinced any particular emotion, either of dissatisfaction or otherwise, when she had confided to him the fact that she was expecting her god-daughter.  And although the extreme composure exhibited by both Michael and Magda was a trifle baffling, Lady Arabella was fain to comfort herself with her confirmed belief in propinquity as the resolution of most lovers’ problems and misunderstandings.

She was fully determined to bring these two together once more if it were in any way possible, and the commission to paint her portrait had been merely part of her scheme.  Her three score years and ten had had little enough to do with it.  They weighed extremely lightly on her erect old shoulders, and her spirit was as unquenchable as it had been twenty years ago.  It seemed more than likely that fate was preparing to allow her quite a good deal of rope.

As for Quarrington, he would probably have refused to return to England at this juncture to please anyone other than Lady Arabella.  But somehow no one ever did refuse Lady Arabella anything that she particularly set her heart upon.  Moreover, as he reflected upon receipt of her assured little missive commissioning him to paint her portrait, he would be obliged to return to England sooner or later, and by now he felt he had himself sufficiently in hand to risk the contingency of a possible meeting with Magda.  But he had hardly counted upon finding himself actually under the same roof with her for days together, and, although outwardly unmoved, he was somewhat taken aback when halfway through his visit to the Hermitage, Lady Arabella cheerfully communicated the prospect to him.