't like his hand on hers.
And she did like it.

She looked down at it, and found that she wanted to stroke it. But would
Aunt Alice stroke it? No; Anna-Felicitas felt fairly clear about that.
Aunt Alice wouldn't stroke it; she would take it up, and shake it, and
say good-bye, and walk off home to lunch like a lady. Well, perhaps she
ought to do that. Christopher would probably think so too. But what a
pity.... Still, behaviour was behaviour; ladies were ladies.

She drew out her right hand with this polite intention, and
instead--Anna-Felicitas never knew how it happened--she did nothing of
the sort, but quite the contrary: she put it softly on the top of his.

CHAPTER XXXV

Meanwhile Mr. Twist had driven on towards Acapulco in a state of painful
indecision. Should he or shouldn't he take a turning he knew of a couple
of miles farther that led up an unused and practically undrivable track
back by the west side to The Open Arms, and instruct Mrs. Bilton to
proceed at once down the lane and salvage Anna-Felicitas? Should he or
shouldn't he? For the first mile he decided he would; then, as his anger
cooled, he began to think that after all he needn't worry much. The
Annas were lucidly too young for serious philandering, and even if that
Elliott didn't realize this, owing to Anna-Felicitas's great length, he
couldn't do much before he, Mr. Twist, was back again along the lane. In
this he under-estimated the enterprise of the British Navy, but it
served to calm him; so that when he did reach the turning he had made up
his mind to continue on his way to Acapulco.

There he spent some perplexing and harassing hours.

At the bank his reception was distinctly chilly. He wasn't used, since
his teapot had been on the market, to anything but warmth when he went
into a bank. On this occasion even the clerks were cold; and when after
difficulty--actual difficulty--he succeeded in seeing the manager, he
couldn't but perceive his unusual reserve. He then remembered what he
had put down to mere accident at the time, that as he drove up Main
Street half an hour before, all the people he knew had been looking the
other way.

From the bank, where he picked up nothing in the way of explanation of
the American avoidance of The Open Arms, the manager going dumb at its
mere mention, he went to the solicitors who had arranged the sale of the
inn, and again in the street people he knew looked the other way. The
solicitor, it appe