Part 24 (1/2)

and all the time looking at her with an enmity which left her both puzzled and a little frightened.

Frightened that they would never like her, never accept her into the family.

But she had plenty of spirit; she told herself that probably she was imagining the whole thing just because she had been so anxious that they should like her.

They might be jealous, afraid that she was going to take the lion's share of their father from them.

She was quite relieved to have hit on a likely reason, and when Sarre suggested that she might like to go to his study and telephone her grandmother, she agreed with alacrity.

He might be just as anxious to have his children to himself as they were to be with him.

Sarre left her once he had got the number and she settled down to a brief chat with her grandparent.

Everything was lovely, she declared, the house was a dream, the children were very like Sarre in looks and with such beautiful manners.

She talked away for five minutes until she felt that she had satisfied her grandmother's interest, asked a few questions about home, promised to telephone again, and rang off.

She didn't go back to the sitting room at once; ten minutes wasn't long enough.

She got up from Sarre's great leather chair and wandered round the room, having a good look.

It was as lofty as the other rooms in the house, a long, rather narrow room reached by a short pa.s.sage from the hall, its windows overlooking the side of the house.

She paused to look out on to the high wall which ran its length, a neat flower bed, gay with colour, between it and the flag path which ran beneath the window.

She wondered where it went and then resumed her tour.

There were bookshelves, of course, stuffed with books, mostly medical, in Dutch, German and English.

There were some rather lovely engravings on the walls, a desk piled high with books, papers, professional samples, photos of the children and an enormous diary, and a nice little chair drawn up to a small worktable, a charming Regency trifle with a green moire bag hanging from its frame.

Alethea stopped short: perhaps his first wife had sat there, embroidering, while he worked at the desk.

She ran her hand over the back of the velvet-covered chair, not liking to sit in it.

He wouldn't want her to anyway, and even if he did, she had never done embroidery in her life, she wouldn't know where to begin.

She made an instant resolve to try her hand at it at the first opportunity.

She was standing irresolutely in the middle of the room when Sarre came back.

”Finished?

' he wanted to know.

”We were wondering what had happened to you.

' She didn't try to explain, only smiled, a.s.sured him that she had

indeed finished and accompanied him back to the sitting room.

The children went away shortly afterwards--to do their homework, they explained.

They wished her goodnight in their almost perfect English, and then

lapsed into rather noisy Dutch, begging their father to do something or

other.

”There's this habit we have acquired,” he explained, laughing.

”They like me to go upstairs and wish them goodnight.

I shall hand it over to you once we're married, Alethea.

' She saw the instant anger in their young faces.

”Oh, I don't know,” she observed mildly,

”T think it sounds like a very pleasant custom.

I'll think up one for myself.