ympathetic silence fell
between them.

"Then you'll find the hanging-room for the portrait at Friars' Holm?"
queried Lady Arabella, breaking it at last in practical tones.

"You know we'd love to have it," replied Magda warmly. In a studiously
casual voice she pursued: "By the way, does Mr. Quarrington know I'm
here?"

Lady Arabella nodded. Secretly she was congratulating herself on having
successfully tided over the awkwardness of explaining Michael's presence
at the Hermitage. She had been somewhat apprehensive as to how Magda
would take it. It was quite on the cards that she might have ordered her
car round again and driven straight back to London!

But she had accepted the fact with apparent composure--one's mental
states, fortunately, being invisible to the curious eyes of the outside
world!--and Lady Arabella felt proportionately relieved. Nor had
Quarrington himself evinced any particular emotion, either of
dissatisfaction or otherwise, when she had confided to him the fact that
she was expecting her god-daughter. And although the extreme composure
exhibited by both Michael and Magda was a trifle baffling, Lady Arabella
was fain to comfort herself with her confirmed belief in propinquity as
the resolution of most lovers' problems and misunderstandings.

She was fully determined to bring these two together once more if it
were in any way possible, and the commission to paint her portrait had
been merely part of her scheme. Her three score years and ten had had
little enough to do with it. They weighed extremely lightly on her erect
old shoulders, and her spirit was as unquenchable as it had been twenty
years ago. It seemed more than likely that fate was preparing to allow
her quite a good deal of rope.

As for Quarrington, he would probably have refused to return to England
at this juncture to please anyone other than Lady Arabella. But somehow
no one ever did refuse Lady Arabella anything that she particularly set
her heart upon. Moreover, as he reflected upon receipt of her assured
little missive commissioning him to paint her portrait, he would be
obliged to return to England sooner or later, and by now he felt he
had himself sufficiently in hand to risk the contingency of a possible
meeting with Magda. But he had hardly counted upon finding himself
actually under the same roof with her for days together, and, although
outwardly unmoved, he was somewhat taken aback when halfway through
his visit to the H