had decided that she would do and had lent her the work on
book-keeping, hoping that she would be able to keep the house accounts.
In three months he had not addressed her twenty times beyond wishing her
good morning and good night. He had but reluctantly left Rawsley and his
beloved cement works to superintend his ever growing London business. He
was a little suspicious of Victoria's easy manners; suspicious of her
intentions, too, as the northerner is wont to be. Yet he grudgingly
admitted that she was level headed, which was 'more than Maria or his
fool of a son would ever be.'

Victoria thought for a moment of Holt, the book-keeping, the falling due
of insurance premiums; then of Mrs Holt who had just stepped into her
carriage which was slowly proceeding down the drive, crunching into the
hard gravel. A gleam of sunshine fitfully lit up the polished panels of
the clumsy barouche as it vanished through the gate.

This then was her life. It might well have been worse. Mr Holt sometimes
let a rough kindness appear through an exterior as hard as his own
cement. Mrs Holt, stout, comfortable and good-tempered, quite
incompetent when it came to controlling a house in the Finchley Road,
was not of the termagant type that Victoria had expected when she became
a companion. Her nature, peaceful as that of a mollusc, was kind and had
but one outstanding feature; her passionate devotion to her son Jack.

Victoria thought that she might well be content to pass the remainder of
her days among these good folk. From the bottom of her heart mild
discontent rose every now and then. It was a little dull. Tuesday was
like Monday and probably like the Tuesday after next. The glories of the
town, which she had caught sight of during her wanderings, before she
floated into the still waters of the Finchley Road, haunted her at
times. The motor buses too, which perpetually carried couples to the
theatre, the crowds in Regent Street making for the tea-shops, while the
barouche trotted sedately up the hill, all this life and adventure were
closed off.

Victoria was not unhappy. She drifted in that singular psychological
region where the greatest possible pain is not suffering and where the
acme of possible pleasure is not joy. She did not realise that this
negative condition was almost happiness, and yet did not precisely
repine. The romance of her life, born at Lympton, now slept under the
tamarinds. The stupefaction of the search for work