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“You’re very kind to me,” Sarah murmured. “I don’t know what I should have done if I had had to do everything myself!”

Mrs. Vidler sniffed. “A fine thing!” she repeated darkly. “And when is Mrs. Blaney putting in her appearance?”

Sarah suppressed a smile. It was almost as if Mrs. Vidler knew how much her stepmother disliked being referred to as Mrs. Blaney.

“She said she’d come as early as she could,” she answered non-committally.

“Ay, and be gone in the same way!”

“I don’t think she’s faced up to it yet,” Sarah reproved gently. “She’ll keep as busy as she can for the next few weeks to keep herself from thinking about it. But she isn’t unfeeling, Mrs. Vidler.”

“If you say so, but I have my own ideas about that!”

“Then you’ll have to keep them to yourself!” Sarah said with a spurt of temper.

Mrs. Vidler’s eyes looked like two round marbles. “Well, she is your stepmother,” she admitted with a great effort at being just. “All the same, one can’t help noticing things. As I was saying to Mr. Robert—”

“Gould you pass the butter, Mrs. Vidler?”

“I said, that poor girl needs someone to look after her, with them all pecking at her, and him as bad as the rest of them !”

“I think I’ll go and check the drinks,” Sarah put in firmly. “I shan’t be long.”

“All right, Miss Sarah. Don’t you worry none, I can manage here f”

Madge Dryden came with her car overflowing with guests. They poured out of the car and stood on the drive, exclaiming at the quaintness of the oast-house and the calm atmosphere of the village.

“I wonder you can resist staving down here for good!” one of them said to Madge.

“It’s pretty, but too, too boring after a day or so!”

Alec Farne smiled at her. “Sarah doesn’t seem to think so,” he said.

“Sarah doesn’t know what she wants! She thinks long walks and the Women’s Institute are going to keep her occupied for the rest of her life, but it’s only a phase. She had to work so hard in repertory and probably needed the rest!”

“Do you think so?” Alec said pointedly. “I thought she’d found something much more to her liking in the country.”

“What do you mean?” Madge demanded with a dazzling smile.

“Robert Chaddox.”

“Oh, nonsense! Whatever made you think such a thing? I don’t want to break a confidence, but I can assure you that Sarah’s looking in quite another direction ! And now, at last, she can come back to London and you can see a great deal more of each other!”

Sarah caught the end of this remark and came and stood beside her stepmother. Alec raised his eyebrows at her and she shook her head at him. It was not, she thought, a very auspicious beginning.

“Are you sulking, darling, because I didn’t get down earlier?” her stepmother railed her. “I wonder if you should have worn black after all, dear. It makes you look so pale and plain.”

“I feel pale and plain,” Sarah assured her. “You, on the other hand, look terrific!”

Madge was pleased. “It
is
a nice hat, isn’t it?” she preened herself. “Do we go inside now, darling? Or straight to the church?”

Sarah looked about her uncertainly. With relief she saw Robert. He came straight up to her and with the ease born of long practice escorted the little group of mourners over to the church and had introduced the vicar to her stepmother, without Sarah herself having to do any more than take her place in the pew.

Afterwards she had little idea as to what the vicar had said about her father. She was conscious of Madge weeping a little by her side, but she felt no urge to cry. Dry-eyed and ashen-faced, she allowed the service to pour over her, thankful for Robert’s solid presence in the pew behind her, and afterwards, when they followed her father’s coffin into the churchyard, so close beside her that she could have put out her hand and touched him.

Later still, it was a little like a theatrical garden party. Groups of her stepmother’s friends stood and chatted in the garden and the orchard, their high-heeled shoes and formal dress looking out of place in the country scene. Mrs. Vidler passed round the eats with a stormy face and Sarah did what she could with the drinks.

“Why don’t you ask Alec to do that for you?” Robert asked her, when he saw her struggling to make more soda, a job that always terrified her.

Sarah looked him in the eyes and replied, “Because I prefer not to.”

He held out his hand for the new sparklet and shook the container violently. “Not very handy, is he?”

She bit her lip. “It isn’t that. He has to drive home —afterwards.”

His eyebrows shot upwards. “I wouldn’t let you nanny me like that!”

“You wouldn’t drink and then drive!” she shot back.

“True. Nor do I need mothering by someone younger than myself. Shall I take over the bar for you? Who else is driving? Your stepmother?”

“I expect so. And that man over there. He—he was a friend of my father’s.” She pointed out a tall, spare elderly man who stood a little apart from the others.

Of them all, he alone was obviously saddened by the occasion.

“Is he in the theatre?”

Sarah shook her head. “He’s a solicitor too,” she said. “He and my father played chess together a lot. I think it’s been a bit of a shock to him because Daddy was so —young. He was a friend of my mother too.” She broke off, biting her lip. “Would you say something nice to him, Robert? None of the others will be much in his line. They—they don’t like to show their feelings.”

“They’re succeeding! ” he said dryly.

But almost immediately, with a shriek of dismay, Madge noticed the time. “We will have to start back! The traffic was impossible coming down! And I can’t be late tonight. I’m seeing— Oh well, it never does for the star to be late, does it?”

Her leading man seconded this opinion, his arm negligently draped about her. “Though on an occasion like this one might be forgiven,” he added.

“Never!” Madge giggled.

“You look more like a child than a widow,” he agreed softly. “Doesn’t she, Sarah?”

Hotly embarrassed, Sarah turned away and went over to her father’s friend. From the look in his eyes he had seen the whole exchange and he smiled at her. “Well, Sarah, how are you?” he greeted her.

“Sad,” she said frankly. “But I’m very well, and that’s something, isn’t it?”

“Hm. You’re looking tired. Daniel said you’d had the whole burden on your shoulders. What are you going to do now?”

“I don’t know, Uncle Edwin. I’m not going back to the theatre.”

He looked surprised. “Marriage?”

“No, not that either!” she said as though she had been stung. “Are you going home with the crowd, or can you stay on for a bit?”

“I’m staying on. I have something to say to you about Daniel’s will.” He glanced across the grass towards Madge Dryden. “I suppose your mother is going straight back?”

“Straight away, I think.”

“Pity. What I have to say affects her too. Never mind, I can call round and see her some time in London. It isn’t the way I should have liked to do things, but I suppose she is going on tonight regardless?”

“Yes,” said Sarah.

Edwin Wymer looked disapproving. “I saw her show. Terrible ! And to think I drew up the contract for her! Once I’d seen it, I expected to hear from her daily to get her out of the thing, but she seems determined to stick it out!”

Sarah laughed. “I think they’re going. Uncle Edwin, may I introduce you to Robert Chaddox while I see them off.”

“Chaddox? I seem to have heard the name.”

“Chaddox as in Chaddoxboume,” Sarah told him pertly. “He’s the local lord of the manor!”

Mr. Wymer’s eyes twinkled. “And one of the leading attractions?” he teased her.

“You’ll have to judge that for yourself!” she retorted tartly.

She introduced the two men and left them discussing the differences between a town or country practice. Before she left, she thought she caught a glimpse of envy in Uncle Edwin’s eyes as Robert spoke of local property values and the conveyancing fees that were coming in to his office.

“You should try a fashionable practice in London, my boy, and then you’d know what worry is! We have our share of property exchanging hands, of course, but we have a lot of other work. Both Daniel and Madge were among my clients.”

Sarah slipped away, hoping to have a word with her stepmother before she went, but she was already too late. Madge was already in her car and busy encouraging as many other people as possible to travel with her.

“Of course there’s room! You came with me, didn’t you?” She barely looked at Sarah and then only to turn away again. “Do hurry!” she urged her guests.

“Madge, when will you be down again?”

“Soon, darling. You may as well stay and use up the tenancy. It will be somewhere for me to visit when I want a breath of fresh air. I’ll give you a ring!”

“Yes. do ” Sarah pleaded.

“Don’t worry, darling, it’s over now! You’ve earned a little holiday for yourself. Enjoy it! I’ll send you some money some time to help out.”

“But, Madge—”

“’Bve, darling! ’Bye, everyone!” With a last flurry of activity, the fleet of cars followed her stepmother out of the gates and away through the village.

Sarah turned on her heel and marched into the house, secretly hoping that Mrs. Vidler would not be there wanting to discuss the funeral blow by blow. She felt too exasperated and battered to talk to anyone for the moment. But if she was lucky as far as Mrs. Vidler was concerned, the voices coming out of the sitting room told her that Robert and Mr. Wymer had come in from the garden and were probably waiting for her to join them.

Unconsciously she squared her shoulders as she went into the room almost as though she were facing a firing squad.

“Have they all gone?” Mr. Wymer asked her.

She nodded, sitting down quickly as far away as possible from Robert.

Mr. Wymer fingered his breast pocket and drew out a document which he spread out on his knee. “This doesn’t seem the moment to be bothering you with your father’s will, my dear, even if it is traditional to spill the contents straight after the funeral.” He put his spectacles on his nose and peered at the paper in front of him.

Robert rose to his feet. “I’ll be going if you have business to discuss,” he began.

“No, no, sit down, my boy. This concerns you too.” Sarah’s eyes widened. She had never thought about her father leaving a will, or even that he had anything much to leave. She had a horrid thought that he might have left her in some way in the care of Robert and the idea brought a burning blush to her cheeks. Surely, he wouldn’t have humiliated her in such a way!

“Ah yes,” Mr. Wymer went on. “His share of the St. John’s Wood house has been left to Madge—”

“I thought it was her house!” Sarah exclaimed, startled into speech. .

“No. Your father actually bought the house just after the war. Later on he included your stepmother’s name on the title deeds to avoid death duties.”

Sarah blinked. Like everyone else she had always thought it had been her stepmother’s money that had kept them all, and she thought miserably of all the pinpricks her father must have suffered on that score through the years.

“He also leaves your stepmother certain sentimental objects—we needn’t bother with them now—and ten thousand pounds outright, as her earning power is extensive and she is unlikely to ever be in need. The rest of his estate is left absolutely to you, Sarah. It’s a considerable sum, my dear, and he hoped that it will provide you with a modest living for life.”

“But Daddy wasn’t a rich man!”

Mr. Wymer glanced at her over his spectacles. “He sold some paintings very well over the years. He was an artist of repute in some circles. And your mother was well off too, you know, and all that she had went to him, in trust for yourself. And that leads me to his last bequest, added recently in a codicil to his will.” A smile flickered over his lips as he looked at Robert. “ ‘To Robert Chaddox of the Manor House, Chaddoxbourne, I give the portrait of my daughter, Sarah, painted by myself and at present hanging in the hall of my house in London, because like myself, he too finds beauty in my daughter’s smile.’ ”

Sarah found herself gripping the arm of her chair until it hurt. “But you won’t want
that!
” she declared.

“Why not?” Robert returned.

Sarah looked at him, completely forgetting Mr. Wymer’s presence in the room. “You’re only accepting it to annoy me !” she declared wildly. “Well, don’t think that I’ll fetch it from London for you! I’ll have nothing to do with it! If you want it, you’ll have to go and get it yourself!”

IT was Michaelmas, still summer, but with the first hint of autumn adding a nip to the air in the morning and evenings. It was also quarter day and Sarah was uneasily aware that the rent on the oast-house was due. It was but a fortnight since her father’s death and she had not seen Robert since, though she was often at the Manor, typing the letters he left for her. Then, on the evening of St. Michael’s Day itself, Robert asked her over to dinner.

“I have your portrait hanging in the dining room,” he told her. “I thought you might like to see it in its new home.”

So he had been up to London and had brought it back already. Sarah was intrigued to discover how he had found her stepmother’s address, but she wouldn’t have dreamed of asking him.

“Why did you accept it?” she asked instead, knowing that she had no right to ask that either.

“Why not?” he drawled. “Daniel wanted me to have it.”

“He may have done—once,” she objected.

“I don’t think he changed his mind,” Robert said maddeningly.

“Well, I’m surprised you want it! I don’t think Samantha will like it much! If you ever sell it, will you sell it to me?”

“I shan’t sell it. I like it. It goes very well on my wall. Your father is a very interesting painter. I should like to see more of his work.”

“Oh,” said Sarah, hurt. “You mean you like it as a portrait of—anyone?”

“Come and see it for yourself. I’ll expect you for dinner. About seven-thirty?”