reclined in a graceful attitude, her head pillowed on her slender
hand, her long dark lashes entangled and resting on her ivory
cheek.' Well, they couldn't rest anywhere else: unless they were
long enough to rest on her nose. 'Her--her breathing was soft
and regular . . .'" It became so. Isabel slept.

Val would rather have owed no gratitude to a man he disliked so
much as Hyde. When Bernard was wheeled away, an interchange of
perfunctory civilities was followed by a constrained silence,
which Val broke by rising. "Hyde, if you'll excuse me, I'll say
five words to Bernard before Barry begins getting him to bed.
There's a right of way dispute going on that he liked me to keep
him posted up in."

"Do," said Lawrence vaguely. He brushed past Val and escaped into
the garden.

Lawrence was enjoying his stay at Wanhope, but tonight he felt
defrauded, though he knew not why. He had had an agreeable day.
In the morning Jack Bendish had appeared on horseback and Lawrence
had ridden over with him to lunch at Wharton, a sufficiently amusing
experience, what with the crabbed high-spirited whims of Jack's
grandfather and the old-fashioned courtesy of Lord Grantchester, and
Yvonne's romantic toilette: later Laura had joined them and they had
played bowls on the famous green: in the cool of the evening he had
strolled home with Laura through the fields. Dinner too had been
amusing in its way, the wines were excellent, the parlour maid waited
at table like a deft ghost, and he recognized in Mrs. Fryar an artist
who was thrown away alike on Bernard's devotion to roast beef and
Val's inability to remember what he ate. Yet Lawrence was left
vaguely discontented.

Bernard's manner to Val had set his teeth on edge. Bernard could
have meant no harm: no one had ever known the truth except
Lawrence and Val, and possibly Dale with such torn shreds of
consciousness as H. E. and barbed wire had left him: but in all
innocence Bernard had set the rack to work as deftly as Lawrence
could have done it himself. Lawrence pitied--no, that was a
slip of the mind: he was not so weak as to pity Stafford, but
their intercourse was difficult, genant.

And Isabel Stafford too: Clowes had left her out of the
conversation as though she were a child, and though Lawrence
tried to bring her in she remained, so to say, in the nursery
most of the time, speaking when she was spoken to but without any
of her characteristic freshness and boldness. S