one?" Miller was
the chauffeur. "Undignified, I call it, the way you women run
after a man nowadays. You think men like it but they don't."

Laura wondered if she dared tell him not to be silly. He might
take it with a grin, in which case he would probably relent and
let her go: or--? The field of alternative conjecture was wide.
In the end Laura, whose knee was still aching from her adventure
with the chair, decided to chance it. But--perhaps because they
were suffused with irritation--the words had no sooner left her
lips than she regretted them.

"I won't have it." Bernard's heavy jaw was clenched like a
bloodhound's. "It's not decent running after Hyde while I'm tied
here by the leg. I won't have you set all the village talking.
There's the Times on my table. Stop. Where are you going?"

"To ring the bell. It's time Miller started. You don't want your
cousin to find no one there to meet him--not even a cart for his
luggage."

"He can walk. Do him good: and Miller can fetch the luggage
afterwards. You do as I tell you. Take the Times. Sit down in
that chair with your face to the light and read me the leading
articles and the rest of the news on Page 7. Don't gabble: read
distinctly if you can--you're supposed to be an educated woman,
aren't you?"

Poor Laura had been looking forward to her drive. She had taken
some innocent pleasure in choosing the prettiest of her morning
dresses, a gingham that fell into soft folds the colour of a
periwinkle, and in rearranging the liberty scarf on her drooping
gipsy straw, and in putting on her long fringed gauntlets and
little country shoes. Her husband's compliments made her wince,
Jack Bendish had eyes only for his wife, Val Stafford's
admiration was sweet but indiscriminate: but she remembered
Lawrence as a connoisseur. And worse than the sting of her own
small disappointment were the breaking of her promise to
Lawrence, the failure in hospitality, in common courtesy.

And for the thousandth time Laura wondered whether it would not
have been better for Bernard, in the long run, to defy his
senseless tyranny. He was at her mercy: it would have been easy
to defy him. Easy, but how cruel! A trained nurse would have
made short work of Bernard's whims, he would have been washed and
brushed and fed and exercised and disregarded--till he died
under it? Perhaps. It was safer at all events to let him go
his own way. He could never hope to command his regi