Chapter 4

“Why have you been so funny all vese days?” Lord Hovenden had at last brought himself to put the long-premeditated question.

“Funny?” Irene echoed on another note, trying to make a joke of it, as though she didn’t understand what he meant. But of course she did understand, perfectly well.

They were sitting in the thin luminous shadow of the olive trees. The bright sky looked down at them between the sparse twi-coloured leaves. On the parched grass about the roots of the trees the sunlight scattered an innumerable golden mintage. They were sitting at the edge of a little terrace scooped out of the steep slope, their legs dangling, their backs propped against the trunk of a hoary tree.

“You know,” said Hovenden. “Why did you suddenly avoid me?”

“Did I?”

“You know you did.”

Irene was silent for a moment before she admitted: “Yes, perhaps I did.”

“But why,” he insisted, “why?”

“I don’t know,” she answered unhappily. She couldn’t tell him about Aunt Lilian.

Her tone emboldened Lord Hovenden to become more insistent. “You don’t know?” he repeated sarcastically, as though he were a lawyer carrying out a cross-examination. “Perhaps you were walking in your sleep all ve time.”

“Don’t be stupid,” she said in a weary little voice.

“At any rate, I’m not too stupid to see vat you were running after vat fellow Chelifer.” Lord Hovenden became quite red in the face as he spoke. For the sake of his manly dignity, it was a pity that his th’s should sound quite so childish.

Irene said nothing, but sat quite still, her head bent, looking down at the slanting grove of olives. Framed within the square-cut hair, her face was sad.

“If you were so much interested in him, why did you suggest vat we should go for a walk vis afternoon?” he asked. “Perhaps you fought I was Chelifer.” He was possessed by an urgent desire to say disagreeable and hurting things. And yet he was perfectly aware, all the time, that he was making a fool of himself and being unfair to her. But the desire was irresistible.