As these thoughts passed through her mind, she was settling herself, laying her bag across her knees, folding her hands upon it, leaning back, smiling easily. It wasn’t every woman of her age who could face the light with so much equanimity. Thirty-seven years had taken nothing from the smooth brilliance of her skin. They had only refined tint, features, and outline, leaving her a good deal more attractive than she had been at twenty. Mistress of herself, of her thoughts, of her life. Very much mistress of Jimmy Latter, Jimmy Latter’s thoughts, and Jimmy Latter’s life.

The continuing silence gave her a slightly contemptuous feeling. It would take more than a dark room and an old man looking at her to disturb her poise. The situation or the circumstances which she could not dominate were as yet an unknown quantity. She had sailed easily through her life and her two marriages. James Doubleday had left her his money. The unpleasantness about his will had been triumphantly surmounted. She had chosen Jimmy Latter to succeed him, and she was prepared to maintain that she had chosen well. You can’t have everything, and the will had been still in doubt. Antony was very charming-when he liked. But you don’t take the poor cousin when you can have the rich one- not at thirty-five, when you are old enough to realize that if you are clever you can both eat your cake and have it.

Not that Jimmy was rich-he had far less than she had imagined. But fortunately James Doubleday’s will had turned out all right, and Latter End was really the setting of her dreams-small and lovely, untouched by the war, needing only the money she would be able to spend on it now.

If it had only been Antony ’s… It might be yet… The thought passed through her mind like a breath. Antony – she was lunching with him when all this mumbo jumbo was over. Her smile became a perfectly natural one.