dy to have been pleasant to Jan and to have met her more
than half-way if she was reasonable, but since she had chosen to bring
Ledgard into it, she should pay. After all, she was only a woman, and
you can always frighten a woman if you go the right way about it. It was
damned bad luck that Ledgard should have turned up just now. It was
Ledgard he'd got to thank that Fay had made that infamously unjust will
by which she left the remnant of her money to her children and not to
her husband. Oh yes! he'd a lot to thank Ledgard for. Well, he wouldn't
like it when Jan got hurt. Ledgard was odd about women. He couldn't
bear to see them worried; he couldn't bear to see Fay worried,
interfered then. A blank, blank, blank interfering chap, Ledgard was.
_What Jan needed was a real good scare._

They suggested Guernsey. Well, he'd go to Guernsey, and he wouldn't go
alone. Hugo thoroughly enjoyed a plot. The twilight world that had been
so difficult and perplexing to poor Fay had for him a sort of exciting
charm. Wren's End had become dreadfully dull. For the first week or two,
while he felt so ill, it had been restful. Now its regular hours and
ordered tranquillity were getting on his nerves. All those portraits of
his wife, too, worried him. He could go into no room where the lovely
face, with youth's wistful wonder as to what life held, did not confront
him with a reminder that the wife he had left to die in Bombay did not
look in the least like that.

There were few things in his life save miscalculation that he regretted.
But he did feel uncomfortable when he remembered Fay--so trustful
always, so ready to help him in any difficulty. People liked her; even
women liked her in spite of her good looks, and Hugo had found the world
a hard, unfriendly place since her death.

The whole thing was getting on his nerves. It was time to shuffle the
cards and have a new deal.

He packed his suit-case which had been so empty when he arrived, and
waited for a day when Peter had taken Jan, Meg and the children for a
motor run to a neighbouring town. He took care to see that Earley was
duly busy in the kitchen garden, and the maids safely at the back of the
house. Then he carried it to the lodge gate himself and waited for a
passing tradesman's cart. Fortune favoured him; the butcher came up with
(had Hugo known it) veal cutlets for Hugo's own dinner. Hugo tipped the
butcher and asked him to leave the suit-case at the station to be sent