“Y OU don’t like Jean Peterson.”

Burke made the announcement without preface. He and Judith were sitting together on the verandah at Willow Perry, where their coffee had been brought them after lunch. Judith inhaled a whiff of cigarette smoke before she answered. Then, without any change of expression, her eyes fixed on the glowing tip of her cigarette, she answered composedly:

“No. Did you expect I should?”

“Well, hang it all, you don’t hold her accountable for her father’s defection, do you?”

A dull red crept up under Mrs. Craig’s sallow skin, but she did not lift her eyes. They were still intent on the little red star of light dulling slowly into grey ash.

“Not accountable,” she replied coolly. “I look upon her as an unpleasant consequence.” She bent forward suddenly. “Do you realise that she might have been—my child?” There was a sudden vibrating quality in her voice, and for an instant a rapt look cajne into her face, transforming its hard lines. “But she isn’t. She happens to be the child of the man I loved—and another woman.”

“You surely can’t hate her for that?”

“Can’t I? You don’t know much about women, Geoff. Glyn Peterson stamped on my pride, and a woman never forgives that.”

She leaned back in her chair again, her face once more an indifferent mask. Burke sat silent, staring broodingly in front of him. Presently her glance flickered curiously over his face.

“Why does it matter to you whether I like her or not?” she asked, breaking the silence which had fallen.

Burke shifted in his chair so that he faced her. His eyes looked far more red than brown at the moment, as though they glowed with some hot inner light.

“Because,” he said deliberately, “I’m going to marry her.”

Judith sat suddenly upright.

“So that’s the meaning of your constant pilgrimages to Staple, is it?”

“Just that.”

She laughed—a disagreeable little laugh like a douche of cold water.

“You’re rather late in the field, aren’t you?”

“You mean that Blaise Tormarin wants her?”

“Of course I do. It’s evident enough, isn’t it?”

Burke pulled at his pipe reflectively.

“I should have thought he’d had a sickener with Nesta Freyne.”

“So he had. But not in the way you mean. He never—loved—Nesta.”

“Then why on earth did he ask her to marry him?”

“Good heavens, Geoffrey! You’re a man—and you ask me that! There are heaps of men who ask women to marry them on the strength of a temporary infatuation, and then regret it ever after. Luckily for Blaise, Nesta saved him the ‘ever after’ part. But”—eyeing him significantly—“Blaise’s feeling for Jean isn’t of the ‘temporary’ type. Of that I’m sure.”

“All the same, I don’t believe he means to ask her to marry him.”

“No. I don’t think he does—mean to. He’s probably got some high-minded scruples about not asking a second woman to make a mess of her life as a result of the Tormarin temper. It would be just like Blaise to adopt that attitude. But he will ask her, all the same. The thing’ll get too strong for him. And when he asks her, Jean will say yes.”

“You may be right. I’ve always said you were no fool, Judy. But if it’s as you think, then I must get in first, that’s all. First or last, though”—with a grim laugh—“I’ll back myself to beat Blaise Tormarin. And you’ve got to help me.”

Followed a silence while Judith threw away the stump of her cigarette and lit another. She did not hurry over the process, but went about it slowly and deliberately, holding the flame of the match to the tip of her cigarette for quite an unnecessarily long time.

At last:

“I don’t mind if I do,” she said slowly. “I don’t think I—envy—your wife much, Geoffrey. She won’t be a very happy woman, so I don’t mind assisting Glyn Peterson’s daughter to the position. It would make things so charming all round if he and I ever met again”—smiling ironically.

Burke looked at her with a mixture of admiration and disgust.

“What a thorough-going little beast you are, Judith,” he observed tranquilly.

She shrugged her thin, supple shoulders with indifference.

“I didn’t make myself. Glyn Peterson had a good share in kneading the dough; why shouldn’t his daughter eat the bread? And anyhow, old thing”—her whole face suddenly softening—“I should like you to have what you want—even if you wanted the moon! So you can count on me. But I don’t think you’ll find it all plain sailing.”

“No”—sardonically. “She’ll likely be a little devil to break.... Well, start being a bit more friendly, will you? Ask her to lunch.”

Accordingly, a day or two later, a charming little note found its way to Staple, inviting Jean to lunch with Mrs. Craig.

“I shall be quite alone,” it ran, “as Geoffrey is going off for a day’s fishing, so I hope Lady Anne will spare you to come over and keep me company for an hour or two.”

Jean was delighted at this evidence that Judith was thawing towards her. She was genuinely anxious that they should become friends, feeling that it was up to her, as Glyn’s daughter, to atone—in so far as friendliness and sympathy could be said to atone—for his treatment of her. Beyond this, she had a vague hope that later, if she and Judith ever became intimate enough to touch on the happenings of the past, she might be able to make the latter see her father in the same light in which she herself saw him—as a charming, lovable, irresponsible child, innocent of any intention to wound, but with all a child’s unregarding pursuit of a desired object, irrespective of the consequences to others.

She felt that if only Judith could better comprehend Glyn’s nature, she would not only be disposed to judge him less hardly, but, to a certain extent, would find healing for her own bitterness of resentment and hurt pride.

Judith was an unhappy woman, embittered by one of those blows in life which a woman finds hardest to hear. And Jean hated people to be unhappy.

So that it was with considerable satisfaction that she set out across the park towards Willow Perry, crossing the river by the footbridge which spanned it at a point about a quarter of a mile below the scene of her boating mishap.

Judith welcomed her with unaccustomed warmth, and after lunch completely won her heart by a candour seemingly akin to Jean’s own.

“I’ve been quite hateful to you since you came to Staple,” she said frankly. “Just because you were—who you were. I suppose”—turning her head a little aside—“you’ve heard—you know that old story?”

Then, as Jean murmured an affirmative, she went on quickly:

“Well, it was idiotic of me to feel unfriendly to you because you happened to be Glyn’s daughter, and I’m honestly ashamed of myself. I should have loved ............