He liked it so little that one would hardly have supposed he would desire to read, and read it again, yet that is what he was doing. The letter had come by the first post. He had opened it with a smile and been immediately thrown into rather a desperate state of mind. Since then he had gone over every word, every phrase, in an attempt to find a different meaning from the one he could not bring himself to accept. Women said one thing and meant another – it was proverbial. They liked to be courted, flattered, pursued. They liked to make a man show his paces – put him through the hoop.

He was a good-looking man, and he had always had money to spend. Women had run after him, and he had let them run. At forty he had kept his freedom, his figure, and a decidedly good opinion of Brett Eversley. At the moment his handsome face was flushed, his dark eyes brooding, his brows drawn together in a frown. When he looked like that you could see that in the next ten years the regular features might coarsen, the lower part of the face become too heavy, and the colour fixed. On the other hand, grey hair would probably suit him very well and impart an eighteenth-century air. He really was not at all unlike some portrait of a full-flavoured Georgian squire.

As he sat at the desk in his private office at Eversleys, he had the letter spread out before him. However many times he read it, he found himself unable to accept its evidence. It just wasn’t possible that Katharine was turning him down. He read what she had written:

‘Dear Brett,

I‘m afraid it’s no use, and the best thing I can do is just to tell you so and say “Let’s go on being friends.” I said I would think it over, and I have. It isn’t any use, really. You’re a cousin and a friend, and that’s what we are to each other. I can’t change into being anything else. It’s just one of those things. Don’t worry about the money – I’m getting a job.

Yours

Katharine.’