ch immense significance and
catastrophe to those others, Dan and June--to Magda it soon came to
occupy no more than an incidental niche in her memory.

CHAPTER XVII

CROSS CURRENTS

Winter had slipped away, pushed from his place by the tender, resistless
hands of spring. And now spring had given place to summer, and June,
arms filled with flowers, was converting the earth into a garden of
roses.

Magda's car, purring its way southward along the great road from London,
sped between fields that still gleamed with the first freshness of their
young green, while through the open window drifted vagrant little puffs
of clean country air, coming delicately to her nostrils, fragrant of
leaf and bloom.

She was motoring to Netherway, a delightfully small and insignificant
place on the Hampshire coast where Lady Arabella had what it pleased her
to term her "cottage in the country," a charming old place, Elizabethan
in character--the type of "cottage" which boasted a score or so of rooms
and every convenience which an imaginative estate agent, sustained by
the knowledge that his client regarded money as a means and not an end,
could devise.

Summer invitations to the Hermitage--as the place was quite inaptly
called, since no one could be less akin to a hermit than its gregarious
owner--were much sought after by the younger generation of Lady
Arabella's set. The beautifully wooded park, with its green aisles of
shady solitude sloping down from the house to the very edge of the blue
waters of the Solent, was an ideal spot in which to bring to a safe
and happy conclusion a love affair that might seem to have hung fire
a trifle during the hurly-burly of the London season. And if further
inducement were needed, it was to be found in the fact that Lady
Arabella herself constituted the most desirable of chaperons, remaining
considerately inconspicuous until the moment when her congratulations
were requested.

This year a considerable amount of disappointment had been occasioned by
the fact that she had left town quite early during the season, and later
on had apparently limited her invitations exclusively to the trio at
Friars' Holm. She declared that the number of matrimonial ventures
for which the Hermitage was responsible was beginning to weigh on her
conscience. Also, she wanted a quiet holiday and she proposed to take
one.

And now Magda was on her way to join her, Gillian remaining behind in
order to close up the ho