exit, and ten minutes later, Miss Orrincourt, yawning extensively, also retired.
Her disappearance was the signal for an outbreak among the Ancreds.
‘Honestly, Milly! Honestly, Aunt Pauline. Can we believe our eyes!’ cried Cedric. ‘The Sunburst! I mean actually!’
‘Well, Millamant,’ said Pauline, ‘I now see for myself how things stand at Ancreton.’
‘You wouldn’t believe me when I told you, Pauline,’ Millamant rejoined. ‘You’ve been here a month, but you wouldn’t –’
‘Has he given it to her, will somebody tell me?’ Cedric demanded.
‘He can’t,’ said Pauline. ‘He can’t. And what’s more, I don’t believe he would. Unless –’ She stopped short and turned to Paul. ‘If he’s given it to her,’ she said, ‘he’s going to marry her. That’s all.’
Poor Troy, who had been making completely ineffectual efforts to go, seized upon the silence that followed Pauline’s announcement to murmur: ‘If I may, I think I shall –’
‘Dear Mrs. Alleyn,’ said Cedric, ‘I implore you not to be tactful. Do stay and listen.’
‘I don’t see,’ Paul began, ‘why poor Mrs. Alleyn should be inflicted –’
‘She knows,’ said Fenella. ‘I’m afraid I’ve already told her, Paul.’
Pauline suddenly made a gracious dive at Troy. ‘Isn’t it disturbing?’ she said with an air of drawing Troy into her confidence. ‘You see how things are? Really, it’s too naughty of Papa. We’re all so dreadfully worried. It’s not what’s happening so much as what might happen that terrifies one. And now the Sunburst. A little too much. In its way it’s a historic jewel.’
‘It was a little cadeau d’estime from the Regent to Great-Great-Grandmama Honoria Ancred,’ Cedric cut in. ‘Not only historical, but history repeating itself. And may I point out, Aunt Pauline, that I personally am rocked to the foundations. I’ve always understood that the Sunburst was to come to me.’
‘To your daughter,’ said Paul. ‘The point is academic.’
‘I’m sure I don’t know why you think so,’ said Cedric, bridling. ‘Anything might happen.’
Paul raised his eyebrows.
‘Really, Pauline,’ said Millamant. ‘Really, Paul!’
‘Paul, darling,’ said Pauline offensively, ‘don’t tease poor Cedric.’
‘Anyway,’ said Fenella, ‘I think Aunt Pauline’s right. I think he means to marry, and if he does, I’m never coming to Ancreton again. Never!’
‘What shall you call her, Aunt Pauline?’ Cedric asked impertinently. ‘Mummy, or a pet name?’
‘There’s only one thing to be done,’ said Pauline. ‘We must tackle him. I’ve told Jenetta and I’ve told Dessy. They’re both coming. Thomas will have to come too. In Claude’s absence he should take the lead. It’s his duty.’
‘Do you mean, dearest Aunt Pauline, that we are to lie in ambush for the Old Person and make an altogether-boys bounce at him?’
‘I propose, Cedric, that we ask him to meet us all and that we simply – we simply –’
‘And a fat lot of good, if you’ll forgive me for saying so, Pauline, that is likely to do,’ said Millamant, with a chuckle.
‘Not being an Ancred, Millamant, you can’t be expected to feel this terrible thing as painfully as we do. How Papa, with his deep sense of pride in an old name – we go back to the Conquest, Mrs. Alleyn – how Papa can have allowed himself to be entangled! It’s too humiliating.’
‘Not being an Ancred, as you point out, Pauline, I realise Papa, as well as being blue-blooded, is extremely hot-blooded. Moreover, he’s as obstinate and vain as a peacock. He likes the idea of himself with a dashing young wife.’
‘Comparatively young,’ said Cedric.
Pauline clasped her hands, and turning from one member of her family to another, said, ‘I’ve thought of something! Now listen all of you. I’m going to be perfectly frank and impersonal about this. I know I’m the child’s mother, but that needn’t prevent me. Panty!’
‘What about Panty, Mother?’ asked Paul nervously.
‘Your grandfather adores the child. Now, suppose Panty were just to drop a childish hint.’
‘If you suggest,’ said Cedric, ‘that Panty should wind her little arms round his neck and whisper: “Grandpapa, when will the howwid lady wun away?” I can only say I don’t think she’d get into the skin of the part.’
‘He adores her,’ Pauline repeated angrily. ‘He’s like a great big boy with her. It brings the tears into my eyes to see them together. You can’t deny it, Millamant.’
‘I dare say it does, Pauline.’
‘Well, but Mother, Panty plays up to Grandpapa,’ said Paul bluntly.
‘And in any case,’ Cedric pointed out, ‘isn’t Panty as thick as thieves with Sonia?’
‘I happen to know,’ said Millamant, ‘that Miss Orrincourt encouraged Panty to play a very silly trick on me last Sunday.’
‘What did she do?’ asked Cedric.
Fenella giggled.
‘She pinned a very silly notice on the back of my coat when I was going to church,’ said Millamant stuffily.
‘What did it say, Milly, darling?’ Cedric asked greedily.
‘Roll out the Barrel,’ said Fenella.
‘This is getting us nowhere,’ said Millamant.
‘And now,’ said Troy hurriedly, ‘I really think if you’ll excuse me –’
This time she was able to get away. The Ancreds distractedly bade her goodnight. She refused an escort to her room, and left them barely waiting, she felt, for her to shut the door before they fell to again.
Only a solitary lamp burned in the hall, which was completely silent, and since the fire had died out, very cold. While Troy climbed the stairs she felt as she had not felt before in this enormous house, that it had its own individuality. It stretched out on all sides of her, an undiscovered territory. It housed, as well as the eccentricities of the Ancreds, their deeper thoughts and the thoughts of their predecessors. When she reached the gallery, which was also dim, she felt that the drawing-room was now profoundly distant, a subterranean island. The rows of mediocre portraits and murky landscapes that she now passed had a life of their own in this half-light and seemed to be indifferently aware of her progress. Here, at last, was her own passage with the tower steps at the end. She halted for a moment before climbing them. Was it imagination, or had the door, out of sight on the half-landing above her, been softly closed? ‘Perhaps,’ she thought,
