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cards; golf clubs leant beside the umbrella-stand, and a curious square box, with brass corners and a brass handle in the lid, stood near the foot of the stairs. She even savoured a new odour on the air; leather? tweed? tobacco? and something added;—or was it merely her fancy that added it?—something faintly yet sharply reminiscent of years ago in India; an aromatic, bitter whiff. She had hated India; she turned her thoughts away from it now as the pain of an old self-reproach visited her heart. She had been the romance, the delight of her young husband’s life, yet she knew that she had not made him happy during the two years they had spent together. She had loved Charlie, but she had hated India and hated his acceptance of the life she found so unbearable in its formulas of empty gaiety, its heavy idle days and convivial nights. It had revealed her to herself as a rebel, a bohemian. In her girlhood’s home they had questioned everything; in Charlie’s India they questioned nothing.

‘Miss Norah’s uncle has come then?’ she said.

‘He came last night, Ma’am, unexpectedly. They had a wire from Dover to say. It wasn’t till Saturday they had been looking for him. You will see Miss Norah, Ma’am? She is just gathering the eggs.’