“I hope not.”

The brilliant eyes watched him with interest. They were not soft and deep like Rosamond’s. They had the brightness and glitter of sea water under the sun. After surveying him at her leisure she said,

“I suppose you are a doctor. I have seen so many of them. At first they thought I was going to die. They didn’t say so, but of course I knew. Now they say I’m a Remarkable Case. It’s a bore being an invalid, but you meet some very interesting people, and it’s nice to be a Remarkable Case.”

“I shouldn’t think it would make up for not being able to run about. But you are going to be able to do that too, aren’t you?”

She pursed up her mouth.

“I expect so. You haven’t told me your name. Are you one of the famous ones? The last man who came to see me was. He came over from Paris on purpose, and I can’t remember his name, because I think it was Russian. It sounded like a sneeze, and the Russian ones do, don’t they?”

“I’m afraid I’m not a doctor at all.”

“Oh? Then why did you want to see me?”

“Well, I was passing-”

“How did you know there was anything to pass, or anyone to come and see? Did you know my father and mother? If it was my father, Aunt Lydia wouldn’t be at all pleased. She has always been angry because my mother was a girl, and because my father wouldn’t change his name when he married her. If he had, we should have been Crewes and carried on the family, and now there’s no one. It makes her wild to think of Maxwells living in Crewe House, so perhaps she’ll just leave it to the nation, and Rosamond and I won’t have anywhere to go-like Vera Vavasour and her child in Passionate Hearts. Have you read Passionate Hearts? It’s by Gloria Gilmore.”

“I don’t think I have.”

“Oh, you would know if you had. It’s marvellous! I cried so much over the seventeenth chapter that Rosamond took it away. But she had to give it back again, because I wouldn’t stop crying until she did!”