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Madge opened the front door with her key and came inside. Robert and Samantha turned away, joining their arms together as they walked slowly back towards the Manor.

Sarah gave a stifled gasp, ran in her bare feet into her own room and jumped into bed, hauling the bedclothes up over her head. That night was the first night she cried herself to sleep since she had been a tiny child. She didn’t care if she felt rotten in the morning. She didn’t care about anything!

By the middle of the week her father was well enough for Sarah to leave him for more than a few minutes at a time and she went back to work at the Manor. She was almost as nervous as she had been that first time when she had walked through the Manor gardens, not knowing what to expect when she reached the other end. This time she had the book she had found for Robert amongst her possessions in London. How much she had been looking forward to giving it to him and now, would he even accept it? She blinked quickly, knowing that she was laying herself open to a snub. Well, if he did, he did, and that was all there was to it. She had to keep hoping that he would eventually believe her, or she would be left with nothing.

The letters she was to type were neatly piled up on the desk in the study. She looked through them, noting Robert’s pencilled replies on the back. There was nothing there that she would have to ask him about, so she took the cover off the typewriter and began the first letter, wishing that she had the speed of a professional instead of her own rather hesitant method.

She had practically finished when Robert came into the room. To her annoyance, far from remaining calm and dignified, she felt the colour fly to her face and her mouth was suddenly dry when faced with having to speak.

“I—I brought you something back from London,” she burst out.

His face was so reserved that she winced. Surely, no matter what he thought she had done, there was no need to look at her like that.

“I thought you’d like it,” she added, sounding tearful.

“Oh?” he said cautiously.

“I went through the things I have at my stepmother’s house on Sunday evening—”

“Indeed?”

“Things I had when I was at school, and other stuff that I didn’t want to cart round the countryside when I went into repertory. And I found this book.” She gave him a scared look. “I hope you like it.”

He made no move to take it from her. “Sarah, don’t make it more difficult for yourself,” he said.

“Aren’t you going to accept it?” she asked baldly.

“I don’t know. Are there any strings attached?”

“What a beastly thing to say!”

He admitted the justice of that. “I suppose so. But it’s no use clinging on to something that’s dead. I shan’t change my mind, Sarah. You’ll have to accept that.”

“I do,” she said quietly.

“I wonder. I’m not completely inexperienced in these matters. I know there was a spark between us that even you couldn’t simulate. It wasn’t all boredom, was it? But the temptation of having your cake and eating it was too much for you when you saw Alec Farne again. I’m not blaming you—”

“Aren’t you? I think you are.”

His eyes glinted, icily grey. “I was going to ask you to be my wife. Are you surprised if I’m jealous that you can cast your favours in another man’s direction? But I’m not blaming you for that. Different people have different standards in these matters. Where you’re to blame was in lying to me about how you felt. For that, I don’t think I shall ever forgive you.”

Sarah sighed. “Don’t you think you could possibly be wrong?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Then there’s nothing more to be said.”

“Oh, Sarah! Why did you have to do this to me? I told you I couldn’t share you with anyone else! I wouldn’t even have shared you with the theatre—I saw too much of that with my stepmother.”

Sarah turned away from him, suddenly hopeless. “I’m going to give up the theatre anyway,” she said.

“You have no choice while your father needs you.”

“No, but you were right in thinking that he won’t need me for very long.”

“I’m sorry,” he said stiffly.

“Yes, it’s an unhappy ending for him. I wish things could have come right for him, but they don’t always, no matter how worthwhile the person. I suppose it’s a lesson that we all have to learn some time or other. Only he deserved better things!”

“He has a devoted wife and daughter.”

She smiled a bitter smile. “Thank you for those few kind words. You do believe that I care for him, then?”

“Of course I do! You’ve worn yourself to a shadow this last week looking after him.”

“Ironic, isn’t it?” she mocked. “I love him, but I can’t give him the love he wants, because I’m only his daughter and not his wife! And I love you, but I can’t have that either because—”

“It doesn’t do any good to keep going over the same ground. I’ve tried to believe you, Sarah, but I can’t. And it doesn’t do any good to try and shift the blame on to Madge. Why do you suppose I asked her to dinner last night? She’s heartbroken about your father. She loves him, as you do—”

“In her way, I think she does.”

“You didn’t see her face when she had to leave him to go back to London,” he said bleakly. “But even so I asked her outright if she had told you about how ill Daniel was. She was so surprised at the idea that she dropped her fork. As far as she knew you ‘were out with Alec and she was unable to get hold "of you. As for having supper with you both, she denied it absolutely. What reason would she have for lying?”

“I don’t know,” Sarah admitted.

“Whereas you have every reason for not wishing to be found out,” Robert went on brutally. “You see, I do believe you feel something for me, but you were quite prepared to have a little fun on the side if you weren’t going to be found out! ”

“If our positions were reversed, I’d believe you no matter what!”

“Don’t be silly, Sarah. You’d have to believe the evidence of your own eyes !”

“But not Neil’s hastily drawn conclusions.”

“And your stepmother’s evidence? Would you dismiss that too? She denies seeing you at all that evening! ”

“Then there’s nothing more to be said,” Sarah agreed wearily. “But does that mean that I can’t give you a book for your father’s collection?”

He studied her pale face for a long moment. “I’m not to be bought by a well chosen peace offering,” he said finally.

“Nor would I insult you by offering one.” She smiled wryly. “Not that I expect you to believe that. Your opinion of me is quite clear even to one of my limited intelligence. It couldn’t be lower!”

“It could be,” he told her seriously. “There are many things I admire about you.”

“But not enough ! ” she protested.

“No, not enough. I’m too possessive by nature. If I can’t have all of you, then I don’t want any of you !”

She knew then that he was hurting himself as much as he was hurting her, and she could have wept for them both.

“I’d like you to have the book,” she said. “I’d forgotten I had it. I bought a lot of books at about that time. I was rather lonely, you see, and they made reliable friends.”

He looked down at the book she had put down on the desk again. “You didn’t buy it when you were in London?”

She shook her head. “I don’t suppose you’ll believe that either!”

He picked up the book and examined it with the careful delight of the geninue booklover. On the fly-leaf he read her name, written in a clear childish hand and dated some ten years before.

“It isn’t a first edition,” she told him anxiously. “But it is a facsimile, and you haven’t got a copy. I know because I looked.”

“A Perambulation of Kent
by William Lambard,” he read aloud. “Are you sure you want me to have it? It must have represented quite a lot of pocket money.”

“I read it from cover to cover when I first had it,” she remembered. “It will feel more at home on your shelves than in my old school trunk, though.” She didn’t add that she wanted to leave something of herself in the Chaddox domain. She thought she didn’t have to. “I must get on with my work,” she added briskly. “I don’t want to leave my father for long until he’s a bit stronger.”

“You’re not finding it too much, are you?” he asked, noting again how pale and drawn she was looking.

To his surprise her face crumpled and he thought she was going to cry. “I can keep on coming, can’t I, Robert?” she begged. “You don’t have to see me while I’m here. I won’t come when you’re at home.”

His face softened as he looked at her, his eyes puzzled. “Do you want to as much as all that?”

If she had had any pride she would have denied it, she thought dully. But, as far as he was concerned, she had no pride. She had no defences at all. She nodded her head and gulped. “It—it takes my mind off my father,” she said.

He smiled at her and her heart turned right over. “Then of course you must come—when your father can spare you. Thank you for the book.”

She attempted a smile herself. “You’re welcome!” She began to type madly, knowing that she would have to do it all over again. He went on standing there, watching her, until her hands began to shake and she had to grit her teeth to force herself to go on. But when she looked up again he had gone, shutting the door behind him.

Sarah was just putting the cover back on the typewriter when Mrs. Vidler brought in her cup of coffee.

“I didn’t think you’d know I was here,” Sarah smiled at her.

“I wouldn’t have, but Mr. Robert went out through the back door and he said you’d come in this morning for a little while. Your father must be better. I’m ever so glad for you.”

“Thank you. He is very much better, but the doctor says it won’t last. He has a bad heart, you see.”

“Yes, love, I know. Mr. Robert told me. He was saying that you wouldn’t be needing the oast-house much longer the way things were going. Still, I expect you’ll be glad to get back to London in some ways. Nobody will be asking you to make a choir out of a collection of females there, I’ll be bound!”

“I shall miss it,” Sarah said sadly.

“Mebbe. You’ve settled down right nicely. I was thinking you might want to stay round here now you’ve had a taste of the life, but I suppose you feel more at home in London ?”

“I hate London!” Sarah said with such-concentrated energy that she upset the pile of letters she had just finished typing. She bent down and began to pick up the scattered pieces of paper.

“Then you’ll be staying on here?”

Sarah pretended she hadn’t heard. She went on picking up the letters, hoping that Mrs. Vidler would take the hint and go away.

“Of course we’ll miss you if you go,” Mrs. Vidler went on inexorably. “I’m not going to pretend, Miss Sarah, that I didn’t have hopes that
something else
was going to keep you here, but you can’t arrange things like that to order, can you? I don’t mind saying that I shan’t stay on here the day that that Samantha sets foot over the threshold—”

“Is she likely to?” Sarah asked, jerking herself upright.

“We-ell,” said Mrs. Vidler, “she’d like to.”

“How do you know?” Sarah told herself that she had no right to encourage Mrs. Vidler to gossip with her like this, but she had to know, she just had to!

“You’re not drinking your coffee,” Mrs. Vidler accused her. “It wasn’t no secret that Samantha had her eye on Mr. Robert. It’s said she has more money than she knows what to do with and that she wanted to be Mrs. Chaddox so badly that she offered to put it all into the estate. Mr. Robert had more sense than to accept. But now he’s out with her every night, just as though they hadn’t quarrelled about the money at all!”

“I think Samantha is beautiful,” Sarah forced herself to say.

“Do you now?” Mrs. Vidler’s body quivered with indignation. “Beauty is as beauty does, that’s what I say! That Samantha never goes out of her way to speak to one, never once. She’s been here times without number and she’s never so much as said good morning
^!
”

“Perhaps she’s shy,” Sarah suggested, feeling rather sorry for Samantha.

Mrs. Vidler sniffed. “She’s not a lady,” she confided. “That’s
her
trouble. Mind you, I wouldn’t discuss her outside this house, Miss Sarah. But seeing that you come in yourself to help Mr. Robert out—”

“Oh, quite!” Sarah cut her off hastily.

“Well, it isn’t what I’d hope for him, but there, what can the likes of me do about it? If he’s set on a pretty face, he won’t be persuaded that there’s more to living with a woman than that!”

“Mrs. Vidler—”

“Now you, Miss Sarah, would have been just right for him! ”

“Mrs. Vidler, I don’t think you should say things like that, even to me. Robert—”

“There now! I’ve upset you, Miss Sarah. I should have thought that maybe you wouldn’t want to talk about it. Never you mind, I’ll see to it that Samantha doesn’t have everything her own way!”

“But you mustn’t, Mrs. Vidler! Robert has every right to do as he likes. And he has a right to the privacy of his own home—”

Mrs. Vidler snorted, her eyes meeting Sarah’s. She knew, Sarah thought, she knew exactly how she felt about Robert, so what was the good of trying to pretend that she didn’t. She began again.

“I don’t think you understand. I mean, you’re quite right in thinking that I’m very much in love with Robert, but we’ve decided that we don’t want to get any further involved with each other. We’ve decided
mutually
that we don’t suit each other in any way that matters—” Sarah broke off and busied herself again with sorting the letters she had spilt.

To her surprise, Mrs. Vidler put her comfortable arms around her and held her against her ample bosom in a way that her stepmother had never done, not even when she had been a child.

“Don’t grieve now, Miss Sarah. He’s hurt you, but I daresay he didn’t mean it. Mr. Robert won’t see you leave us now, no matter what you’ve said to him. Now you go home to your father and don’t you go thinking about it any more. It’ll all come out in the wash!”

It wouldn’t, of course, but it was nice to pretend, just for a moment, that it would. Sarah forced a smile and nodded.