“Five years in a couple of sentences-how economical! What does he profess?”

“Oh, literature. He’s gone to lecture on all the different people Shakespeare might have been. So when Emmeline wrote and said your Uncle Arnold wanted someone to catalogue the library at the Hall, and would I come and stay with her and do it, I said I would.”

It was ridiculous to feel nervous, but she did. A glance at Edward’s face did nothing to reassure her. It looked bleak. He said,

“How amusing.”

“What is there amusing about it?”

“I don’t know-it just struck me that way.”

She thought struck was the right word. To change the subject she said,

“I suppose you are staying with Emmeline too?”

“Just for the moment. It will give Greenings something to talk about, if nothing else.”

Susan looked steadily in front of her and said,

“Why should it?”

“Return of the outcast. You know, I’ve only been down once since I got back.”

“I don’t know anything-except that everyone thought you were dead-”

He said in a light, brittle voice,

“And I wasn’t. My mistake. Never come back from the dead-it is a social solecism.”

“You shouldn’t say that. When Emmeline wrote and told me you were alive she said, ‘It is too much happiness!’ ”

“Yes, I believe she really was pleased. There has to be an exception to every rule, and it rather adds to the general humour of the situation that the one person who didn’t mind my being alive should be a stepmother. What else did she tell you?”

“Well, you know Emmeline’s letters. There were bits about the cats-Scheherazade had just had a very plain family, and she was a good deal upset about it in between being all up in the air about you, but I gathered that you were taking a refresher course in land agency. And when she wrote the other day, there was a bit about Lord Burlingham telling her that you were going to come to him, and how nice it would be to have you so near.”