“Your job of work is here.”

“What! with a perfectly good agent who looks upon me as a sort of impediment in his agricultural speech?”

“Nonsense!”

“Look here, father,” said Henry gently, “how much of this has been inspired by Eleanor?”

“Eleanor is as anxious as I am that you shouldn’t make a bloody fool of yourself. If your mother had been alive — ”

“No, no,” cried Henry, “let us not put ideas into the minds of the dead. That is so grossly unfair. Let’s recognise Eleanor’s hand in this. Eleanor has been too clever by half. I didn’t mean to tell you about Dinah until I was sure that she loved me. I am not sure. The scene, which Eleanor so conveniently overheard yesterday at the rectory, was purely tentative.” He broke off, turned away from his father, and pressed his cheek against the window pane.

“It is intolerable,” said Henry, “that Eleanor should have spoilt the memory of my first — my first approach to Dinah. To stand in the hall, as she must have done, and to listen! To come clucking back to you like a vulgar hen, agog with her news! As if Dinah was a housemaid with a follower. No, it’s too much!”

“You’ve never been fair to Eleanor. She’s done her best to take your mother’s place.”

“For God’s sake,” said Henry violently, “don’t use that detestable phrase! Cousin Eleanor has never taken my mother’s place. She is an aging spinster cousin of the worst type. It was not particularly kind of her to come to Pen Cuckoo. Indeed, it was her golden opportunity. She left the Cromwell Road for the glories of ‘county.’ It was the great moment of her life. She’s a vulgarian.”

“On her mother’s side,” said Jocelyn, “she’s a Jernigham.”

“Oh, my dear father!” said Henry, and burst out laughing.

Jocelyn glared at his son, turned purple in the face, and began to stammer.

“You may laugh, but Eleanor — Eleanor — in bringing this information — unavoidably overheard — no question of eavesdropping — only doing what she believed to be her duty.”