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By Root 2716 0

her second widowhood. Like her sister, Molly, she had no child by either husband, the first of whom had been one of those ‘well-born’ City men for whom Peter Templer used to express such aversion. He had been a fairly successful stockbroker, fond of hunting and shooting, a man, so far as could be judged, with no salient characteristic. His wife had spent most of her days with friends who belonged to a world quite other than his own; latterly submitting to him in their marriage only to the extent of living in the country, where she was bored to death. She can have seen little more of Lord Warminster, when married to him, much of whose time was spent abroad unaccompanied by his wife, fishing in Iceland or pig-sticking in Bengal. This status of having twice married, without, so it might seem, great attachment to either husband, perhaps gave Lady Warminster the mysterious, witch-like quality she dispensed so pervasively about her.

The second marriage was said—quite unexpectedly—to have improved, on the whole, Erridge’s relations with his father, with whom, without any open quarrel, he had never been on good terms. Lord Warminster had accepted his son’s idiosyncrasies stoically, together with anything else of which he disapproved in his children, attributing everything to their mother’s Alford blood. The rest of the Tolland brothers and sisters had lived—Norah was an exception—amicably with their stepmother: the younger ones entirely brought up by her. Lady Warminster, eccentric herself, showed a decent respect for eccentricity. She had no wish to interfere with other people, her stepchildren or anyone else, provided her own convenience was not threatened, so that the Tollands were left largely to their own devices. Life at Hyde Park Gardens might be ruthless, but it was played out on a reasonably practical basis, in which every man was for himself and no quarter was given; while at the same time a curtain of relatively good humour was usually allowed to cloak an inexorable recognition of life’s inevitable severities.

I was fortunate enough already to have established myself to some small extent in Lady Warminster’s good graces by a book written a year or two before which she happened to have enjoyed, so that my own reception might have been a worse one. Even so, with a person of her sort that was not a matter upon which to presume. For a time we discussed affairs personal to Isobel and myself, and then, as soon as these could be politely, and quite kindly, dismissed, Lady Warminster gave a smile that showed plainly we should turn to more intriguing topics.

‘I think you are one of the few people, either in or out of the family, who have met Erridge lately,’ she said. ‘So that you must now tell me what you think about this trip of his to China.’

I assured her that I knew little or nothing of Erridge and his movements, but that the journey seemed a reasonable one for him to make in the light of his interests and way of life. I admitted that I had heard him discuss a visit to China.

‘I agree with you,’ she said. ‘Erridge is much too much by himself. He will not be alone on the voyage, I think, will he?’

That was not easy to answer. I did not wish, at this early stage in our relationship, to be detected telling, or, indeed, implying, a deliberate lie. I hoped equally to avoid revealing all that was known about Erridge and Mona, scanty as that might be. I said that I knew no details about the arrangements made by Erridge for his journey.

‘There are always plenty of people to talk to on boats,’ I suggested, with a sense of descending into banality of the most painful kind.

‘Of course,’ she said, as if that notion had never before been so well presented to her. ‘Do you like the sea?’

‘Not at all.’

‘Nor me,’ she said. ‘There is nothing I detest more than a sea voyage. But surely he is taking a secretary, or someone of that sort. I think he will. It will be so lonely otherwise. Especially as he is used to living by himself. You are never so lonely as when among a lot of people you do not know.’

It was impossible to tell whether