The Judas kiss

Greystone Manor

I was seventeen years old before I discovered that my sister had been murdered. It was then nearly five years since I had seen her, but every day I had thought of her, longed for her bright presence and mourned her departure from my life.

Before she went away, Francine and I had been as close as two people could be. I suppose I, being the younger by five years, had looked to her for protection, and after the death of our parents when we had come to make Greystone Manor our home, I had had great need of it.

That had happened six years before, and when I looked back on those very early days it seemed to me that we had lived in a paradise. Distance enchants the view, Francine used to say to comfort me and so imply that the island of Calypse had not been completely perfect, so perhaps Greystone Manor was not as gloomy as we, newly become its inmates, believed it to be. Although she was as fragile as a piece of Dresden china in looks, I never knew anyone who had a more practical grip on life. She was realistic, resourceful, irrepressible and always optimistic; indeed she seemed unable to visualize failure. I had always believed that whatever Francine decided she would do, she would do successfully. That was why I was so shattered, so overwhelmed with disbelief when I found that newspaper in Aunt Grace's trunk in the attic at Greystone. I knelt there holding the paper in my hand while the words danced before my eyes.

"Baron von Gruton Fuchs found murdered in his bed in his hunting lodge in the Grutonian province of Bruxenstein last Wednesday morning. With him was his mistress, a young English woman whose identity is as yet unknown, but it is believed she was his companion for some time at the lodge before the tragedy."

There was another cutting attached.

"The identity of the woman has been discovered. She is Francine Ewell, who has been a 'friend' of the Baron for some time."

That was all. It was incredible. The Baron was her husband. I remembered so well how she had told me she was going to be married and how I grappled with myself to cast out the desolation of losing her and trying to rejoice in her happiness.

I just knelt there until I realized my limbs were cramped and that my knees were hurting. Then I took the newspaper cuttings and went back to my bedroom, sitting there dazed, thinking back ... to everything she had been to me, until she had gone away.

Those idyllic early years had been spent on the island of Calypse with our adored, adoring and quite unrealistic parents.

They were the beautiful years. They had ended when I was eleven and Francine sixteen, so I suppose I did not really understand a great deal of what was going on around me. I was unaware of the financial difficulties and the anxiety of living through those periods when no visitors came to my father's studio. Not that any of these fears were shown, for Francine was there to manage us all with the skill and energy which we took for granted.

Our father was an artist in stone. He sculpted the most beautiful figures of Cupid and Psyche, Venus rising from the waves, of little mermaids, dancing girls, urns and baskets of flowers; and visitors came and bought them. My mother was his favourite model and next to her, Francine. I posed for him too. They would never have thought of leaving me out, although I had never had that sylph-like quality of Francine and my mother which lent itself so perfectly to stone. They were the beautiful ones. I resembled my father with hair which was rather nondescript in colour and could be called mid-brown, thick, straight and invariably untidy; I had greenish eyes which changed colour with their surroundings and what Francine called a "pert" nose, and a mouth which was rather large. "Generous," Francine called it. She was a great consoler. My mother had a fairylike beauty which she had passed on to Francine—blond and curly-haired, blue, dark-lashed eyes and that extra fraction of an inch on the nose which was sufficient to make it beautiful, and with all this went a shortish upper lip which revealed ever so slightly prominent pearly teeth. Above all there was that air of helpless femininity which made men want to fetch and carry for them and protect them from the hardships of the world. My mother might have been in need of that protection; Francine never was.

There were long, warm days—rowing the boat out to the blue lagoon and swimming there, taking desultory lessons with Antonio Farfalla who was repaid by a piece of sculpture from our father's studio. "It will be worth a fortune one day," Francine assured him. "You only have to wait until my father is recognized." Francine could convey great authority in spite of her fragile looks, and Antonio believed her. He adored Francine. Until we came to Greystone it seemed that everyone adored Francine. She was charmingly protective even of him, and although she joked a great deal about his name, which in Italian meant Butterfly, and he was the most cumbersome man we ever knew, she was always sympathetic when he was distressed by his clumsiness.

It was some time before I began to be worried by my mother's constant illnesses. She used to lie in her hammock, which we had fixed up outside the studio, and there was always someone there talking to her. At first, my father had told me, we had not been accepted very warmly on the island. We were foreigners and they were an insular people. They had lived there for hundreds of years, cultivating the vines and the silkworms and working in the quarry from which came the alabaster and serpentine in which my father worked. But when the people of the island realized that we were just like them, and were ready to live as they did, they finally accepted us. "It was your mother who won them over," he used to say, and I could well imagine that. She looked so beautiful, ethereal, as though the wind would carry her off when the mistral blew. "They gradually came round," my father said. "There would be little gifts on the doorstep, and when Francine was born we had a houseful of helpers. The same with you, Pippa. You were made just as welcome as your sister."

They always reminded me of that. There came the time when I began to wonder why it should be necessary.

Francine discovered all she could about our family history. She was always eager to learn everything. Ignorance worried her. She wanted to know the smallest detail—why the silkworm yield was higher or lower; how much Vittoria Guizza's wedding feast cost, and who was the father of Elizabetta Caldori's baby. Everything that went on was of the greatest interest to Francine. She had to know the answer.

"They say," said Antonio, "that those who seek to know all may someday discover that which does not please."

"In England they say, 'Curiosity killed the cat,'" Francine told him. "Well, I am not a cat but I intend to be curious ... even if it kills me."

We all laughed at the time, but looking back I remembered that.

Blissful island days they were—the warm sun on my skin, the pungent smell of frangipani and hibiscus; the gentle swish of the blue Mediterranean sea against the shores of the island; long dreamy days lying in the boat after swimming; sitting round the hammock in which our mother gently rocked; watching Francine come into the studio when we had visitors. They came from America and England, but mainly from France and Germany, and over the years Francine and I acquired a fair understanding of these languages. Francine would bring out wine in glasses at the sides of which she had arranged hibiscus flowers. The visitors loved that and they paid high prices for my father's work when Francine talked to them. They were making an investment, she would assure them, for my father was a great artist. He was here on the island because of his wife's health. He should be in his salon in Paris or London. Never mind, it gave these good people an opportunity to acquire works of art at the best possible prices.

They would recognize the beauty of Francine in the statues and they would buy them, and I am sure preserved them and remembered for a long time enchanted afternoons when they were waited on by a beautiful girl who served them wine in a flower-trimmed glass.

So we lived in those long-ago days, never thinking beyond the moment, rising in the morning to the sunshine and going to bed at night deliciously tired out after days of pleasant activities. It was fun, though, to sit in the studio and listen to the rain as it pelted down. "This will bring out the snails," Francine used to say; and when it was over we would go out with our baskets and gather them. Francine was an expert at picking out those which could be sold to Madame Descartes, the Frenchwoman who kept the inn on the waterfront. She would instruct me not to pick those whose shells were soft because they would be too young. "Poor little things, they have had no life yet. Let them live a little longer." It sounded humane, but of course Madame Descartes wanted only those which were edible. We would take them to the inn and receive a little money for them. A few weeks later, when the snails had been taken out of the cage in which they had been kept, Francine and I would go along to the inn and Madame Descartes would give us a taste of them. Francine thought they were delicious cooked with garlic and parsley. I never really fancied them. It was a ritual, however—the end of the snail harvest—and therefore I went solemnly through it with my sister.

Then there was the vine harvest, when we donned wooden shoes like sabots and helped in treading out the grapes. Francine joined in with verve—singing and dancing like a wild dervish, her curls flying, her eyes shining, so that everyone smiled at her and my father said, "Francine is our ambassadress."

Those were the happy days and it never occurred to me that they could change. My mother was growing weaker but somehow she managed to conceal the fact from me. Perhaps she did from my father too, but I wondered whether she did from Francine. But if it did occur to my sister she would have dismissed it as she always did anything she did not want to happen. I sometimes thought that life had bestowed so many gifts on Francine that she believed that the gods were working for her too, so that she only had to say, "I don't want that to happen," and it wouldn't.

I remember the day well. It was September—wine harvest time—and there was that excitement in the air which always heralded it. We would go, Francine and I, and join the young people on the island to begin our stamping on the grapes to the tunes from Verdi's operas which old Umberto would scrape out on his fiddle. We would all sing lustily and the old people would sit and watch, their gnarled hands clasped on their black laps and the light of reminiscence in their rheumy eyes, while we danced until our feet were weary and our voices grew more and more hoarse.

But there was another harvest. One of the poems I liked best was called The Reaper and the Flowers.

There is a Reaper whose name is Death And with his sickle keen He reaps the bearded grain at a breath And the flowers that grow between.

Francine explained it to me; she was good at explaining things. "It means young people sometimes get in the way of the sickle," she said, "then they get cut down too." It seems significant now that she should have been one of those flowers which grew between. But then it was our mother who died, and she was like a flower. It was not time for her to die; she was too young.

It was terrible when we found her dead. Francine had taken in the glass of milk she had every morning. She was lying quite still and Francine said afterwards that she went on talking for quite a while before she realized my mother was not listening. "Then I went to the bed," said Francine; "I just looked at her and then I knew."

So it had happened. All Francine's magic could not hold it off. Death had come with his sickle and taken the fair flower which grew between.

Our father was as one demented. He was very much the artist and when he worked in his studio making those beautiful women who had a look of my mother or my sister, he had always seemed far away. We always laughed at his absent-mindedness. Francine bustled about the studio keeping us all in order. Our mother, for a long time, had been too ill to do very much; she was just there—a benign presence and an inspiration to us all. She had talked to visitors and made them welcome and they all enjoyed that; and as long as Francine was there everything held together.

Now she was gone, Francine took over completely. She talked to the visitors and made them feel they were getting bargains. I don't know how we should have got through that year without her. When our mother was laid to rest in the little cemetery close by the olive groves we should have been a desolate household but for Francine. She became in a sense the head of the household, although she was only fifteen years old. She shopped; she cooked; she kept us going. She refused to take any more lessons with the Butterfly, as she called Antonio, but she insisted that I should. Our father lived with his stone but his figures had lost a certain magic which they had had before. He didn't want Francine to pose for him. That brought back too many memories.

The gloomy months began to pass and I felt a change in myself. I was at that time ten years old but I ceased to be a child.

Our father talked to us during that time. It was in the evenings when we would sit on the green slope which ran down to the sea, and as the darkness fell we would watch the sheen of phosphorescence which came from the shoals of fish and were like will of the wisps on the water ... eerie and yet comforting in a way.

He talked about his life before he came to the island. Francine had been curious about it for a long time and had gleaned a little information which she had extracted from him or our mother during their unwary moments. We often wondered why they were so reluctant to talk about the past. We were soon to discover. I suppose everyone who had lived in Greystone Manor would want to escape from it and even forget he or she had ever been there. For it was like a prison. That was how our father described it, and later I was to understand.

"It's a fine old house," said my father, "a mansion really. Ewells have lived in it for four hundred years. The first Ewell built it before the reign of Elizabeth. Think of that."

"It must be strong to stand up to all that time," I began, but Francine silenced me with a look, and I knew she meant that we must not remind our father that he was thinking aloud.

"They knew how to build in those days. Their houses might have been uncomfortable, but they could stand up not only to the weather but to attackers."

"Attackers," I cried excitedly, only to be silenced again by Francine.

That was when he said, "It was like a prison. To me it was a prison."

There was a deep silence. Our father was looking back right over the years to when he was a boy, before he had met my mother, before Francine was born. It was hard to imagine a world without Francine.

Our father was frowning. "You children have no idea," he said. "You have been surrounded by love. We have been poor, yes. It has not always been a comfortable life—but love there has been in abundance."

I ran to him and threw myself at him. He held me very tightly in his arms. "Little Pippa," he said, "you have been happy, yes? You must always remember Pippa's song. We named you for that, Pippa.

'God's in his heaven-

All's right with the world.'"

"Yes," I cried. "Yes, yes."

Francine said, "Go and sit down, Pippa. You're interrupting Father. He wants to tell us something."

Our father was silent for a while and then he said, "Your grandfather is a good man. Make no mistake about that. But sometimes good men are uncomfortable to live with—for sinners that is."

Silence again, this time broken by Francine who whispered, "Tell us about our grandfather. Tell us about Greystone Manor."

"He was always proud of the family. We had served our country well. We had been soldiers, politicians, squires, but never artists. Well, there was one ... long ago. He was killed in a tavern near Whitehall. His name was never mentioned except with disgust. 'Poetry writing is no life for a man,' said your grandfather. You can imagine what he said when he knew I wanted to be a sculptor."

"Tell us," whispered Francine.

Our father shook his head. "It seemed just impossible. My future was planned for me. I was to follow in his footsteps. I was not to be a soldier, nor a politician. I was the only son of the squire, so I should follow in my father's footsteps. I should learn how to manage the estate and spend the rest of my life trying to be exactly like my father."

"And you couldn't do that," said Francine.

"No—I hated it. I hated everything about Greystone. I hated the house and my father's rule, his attitude towards us all—my mother, my sister Grace and myself. He regarded himself as our master. He wanted obedience in all things. He was a tyrant. And—I met your mother."

"Tell us about that time," said Francine.

"She came to the house to make dresses for your Aunt Grace. She was so gentle, so fragile, so beautiful. It was meeting her that decided me."

"So you ran away from Greystone Manor," said Francine.

"Yes. I broke out of prison. We ran away to freedom— your mother from a life of drudgery with the dressmaking house for which she worked ... I from Greystone Manor. We neither of us ever regretted it for a moment."

"Romantic ... beautiful," murmured Francine.

"There were hard times at first. In London ... in Paris ... trying to make a living. Then we met a man in a cafe. He had the studio on this island and he offered it to us. So we came. Francine was born here ... and so were you, Pippa."

"Didn't he come back to claim the studio?" asked Francine.

"He came back. He stayed with us for a while. You were too young to remember that. Then he went to Paris, where he became quite wealthy. He died some years ago and left me the studio. We have managed to make a living—a poor one, but we have been free."

"We have been very happy, Father," said Francine firmly. "No girls could have been happier."

Then we all embraced one another—we were a demonstrative family—and Francine suddenly became very practical and said it was time we all went to bed.

It was only a few weeks after that conversation that our father was drowned. He had taken the boat out to the blue lagoon as we so often did when a sudden storm blew up and the boat capsized. I wondered afterwards how great an attempt he had made to save himself. Since our mother's death, life had certainly lost its savour for him. He had his two girls, but I think he thought Francine was more capable of looking after herself and me than he was. Besides, he would have guessed the turn events would take, and perhaps he thought it was the best thing for us.

I felt fatalistic, almost as though I knew what was going to happen. I had already come to the conclusion that nothing could be the same after my mother's death. We had tried to regain our old cheerfulness and Francine had managed very well, but even she could not entirely pretend.

We faced each other in the studio on the day he was laid beside my mother near the olive groves. "It was where he wanted to be since she was put there," said Francine.

"What are we going to do?" I said.

She was jaunty almost. "We have each other. There are two of us."

"You'd always be all right and see that I was," I replied.

"That is so," she answered.

Our friends on the island smothered us with kindness. We were fed, caressed and made to feel that we were well loved.

"It's nice for a beginning," commented Francine, "but it won't go on. We have to think."

I was nearly eleven then, Francine sixteen. "Of course," she said, "I could marry Antonio."

"You couldn't. You wouldn't."

"I am fond of the Butterfly, but you are right. I couldn't and I wouldn't."

I looked at her questioningly. She was rarely short of ideas but on this occasion she was. There were dreams in her eyes. "We might go away," she suggested.

"Where to?"

"Somewhere." Then she told me that she had always known that one day she would go away. She could not bear to be shut in, and that was what we were on the island. "It was different when our parents were alive," she said. "It was our home then. It isn't any more, really. Besides, what should we do here?"

Our problem was solved by a letter for Francine.

"Miss Ewell," said the address on the envelope.

"I am that," Francine explained. "You are Miss Philippa Ewell."

As she opened it I saw the excitement in her eyes. "It's from a solicitor," she said. "He's acting for Sir Matthew Ewell. That's our grandfather. In view of the unfortunate circumstances, Sir Matthew wishes us to return at once to England. Our rightful home is Greystone Manor." . I stared at her aghast, but her eyes were shining.

"Oh, Pippa," she said. "We are going to the prison."

There was the excitement of preparing for departure, which was a good thing in a way because it stopped our brooding on our loss, and how great that was we had not yet begun to realize. There was the packing up and the disposal of the studio and its contents which Antonio sadly took over from us.

"But it is best for you," he said. "You will live like great ladies. We always knew that Signor Ewell was a grand gentleman."

One of the men from the solicitor's office came to take us to our new home. He wore a black frock coat and a shiny top hat; he looked quite out of place on the island, where he was regarded with great respect. He was a little shy of us at first, but Francine soon put him at his ease. She had become very dignified since our father's death, very much Miss Ewell who was of higher rank than Miss Philippa Ewell. His name was Mr. Counsell and it was clear that he thought the conducting of two girls to England was a very strange task for a man in his position.

We said a sad farewell to our friends and promised to return. I was on the point of inviting them all to England, but Francine gave me one of her warning looks. "Imagine them in the prison," she said. "They would never come," I told her. "They might," she answered.

It was a long journey. We had made the trip to the mainland on several occasions, but it was the first time I had been in a train. I found it absorbingly interesting and I was a little ashamed of myself because I was enjoying it. I was sure Francine was too. People looked at Francine as I realized they always would. Even Mr. Counsell was a little fascinated by her charm and treated her as a beautiful young woman rather than a child. She was, I suppose, in between the two. In some ways she was a very innocent sixteen, in other ways quite mature. She had managed our household, dealt with the customers and taken on the role of guardian of us all. On the other hand, life on the island had been lived simply and I think that at first Francine was inclined to judge everyone by the people she had known all her life so far.

We crossed the English Channel, and to Mr. Counsell's dismay we missed the train which was to take us to Preston Carstairs, the station for Greystone Manor, and were told we had several hours to wait for the next. He took us to an inn near the docks, where we had a meal of roast beef and potatoes in jackets, which seemed exotic and delicious, and while we were eating the innkeeper's wife came to talk to us. When she heard that we had to wait so long she said, "Why don't you see a bit of the countryside while you're waiting? You could take the trap out a little way. Our Jim's got an hour or so to spare."

Mr. Counsell seemed to think it was a good idea, and that was how we came to see Birley Church. Francine had cried out in delight as we were about to pass it by. There was something very interesting about that church. It was Norman, grey stone and, said Francine, exciting when you thought of all the years it had stood there. Mr. Counsell said he did not see why we should not visit the church, so we did. He himself was quite an authority on architecture and he enjoyed passing on information of which he was clearly proud. While he pointed out the interesting features, Francine and I stood in wonder. We didn't care that the pillars and semicircular arches held up the high walls of the clerestory; we were interested in the queer smell of damp and furniture polish and the stained glass windows with the beautiful colours that threw blue and red shadows everywhere; we studied the list of vicars who had held office since the twelfth century.

"When I marry I should like to be married in this church," said Francine.

We sat in the pews. We knelt on the prayer mats. We stood in awe before the altar.

"It's beautiful," said Francine.

Mr. Counsell reminded us of passing time and we went back to the inn and from there to the station, where the train took us to Preston Carstairs.

When we arrived there a carriage was waiting for us. It had an elaborate crest on it. Francine nudged me. "The Ewell crest," she murmured. "Ours."

Relief now sat on Mr. Counsell's homely features. He had delivered his charges safely.

Francine was looking excited, but, just as in my case, the apprehension was beginning to take hold. It was all very well to joke about the prison when it was miles away. It was a different matter when you were within an hour of being incarcerated.

A stern-faced coachman was waiting for us.

"Mr. Counsell, sir," he said, "is these the young ladies?"

"Yes," answered Mr. Counsell.

"The carriage is here, sir."

He was studying us and as was to be expected his eyes rested on Francine. She was wearing a simple grey cloak, which had been our mother's, and on her head was a straw hat with a marguerite in the centre and ribbons under the chin. It was simple attire but Francine could never look anything but enchanting. His eyes scanned me and then he was back to Francine.

"Better get in, young ladies," he said.

The horses' hoofs rang out on the road as we skimmed along past green hedges, through leafy lanes until we came to a wrought-iron gateway. The gates were opened immediately by a boy who touched his forelock to the carriage and then we were bowling up a drive. The carriage stopped before a lawn and we alighted.

We stood together, my sister and I, hand in hand, and I knew that even Francine was overawed. There it stood, the house which our father had spoken of so vehemently as the prison. It was huge and grey stone as its name implied and there were embattled turrets at either end. I noticed the battlements and the lofty archway through which I could see a courtyard. It was very grand, awe-inspiring, and it filled me with apprehension.

Francine pressed my hand firmly, holding it very tightly as though she took courage from the contact, and together we walked across the grass towards a great door which had swung open. A woman in a starched cap was standing there. The coach had gone forward under the archway into the courtyard and the woman stood in the doorway watching us.

"The master is ready to see you as soon as you arrive, Mr. Counsell," she said.

"Come along." Mr. Counsell smiled reassuringly at us and we went forward towards the door.

I shall never forget stepping inside that house. I was quivering with excitement, which was really a mingling of apprehension and curiosity. The ancestral home! I thought. And then: The Prison.

Those thick stone walls, the coolness as we stepped inside, the awesomeness of the great hall with its vaulted roof, the stone floor and walls on which glittered weapons presumably used by long-dead Ewells—they thrilled me and yet made me fearful in some way. Our footsteps sounded noisy so I tried to walk quietly. I saw that Francine had lifted her head and was putting on that bold look which meant that she was a little more apprehensive than she would like people to know.

"The master said you were to go straight to him," the woman repeated. She was rather plump with greying hair very tightly drawn back from her forehead and all but concealed by her white cap. Her eyes were small, her lips tightly shut, like a trap. She seemed to suit the house.

"If you'll step this way, sir," she said to Mr. Counsell.

She turned and we followed her to the grand staircase, which we ascended. Francine was still holding my hand. We went along a gallery and paused before a door. The woman knocked and a voice said, "Enter."

We did so. The scene remained imprinted on my mind forever. I was vaguely aware of a darkish room with heavy draperies and large, dark pieces of furniture, but it was my grandfather who dominated the room. He was seated there in a chair like a throne and he himself looked like a biblical prophet. He was clearly a very big man; his arms were folded across his chest and what struck me immediately was his long, luxuriant beard, which rippled over his chest and concealed the lower part of his face. Beside him sat a woman, middle-aged and colourless. I guessed she was our Aunt Grace. She looked small, ineffectual and modest, but perhaps that was in comparison with the imposing central figure.

"So you have brought my granddaughters, Mr. Counsell," said my grandfather. "Come here."

This last was addressed to us and Francine advanced, taking me with her.

"H'm," said my grandfather, his eyes surveying us intently, giving me the impression that he was trying to find fault with us. What astonished me was that he seemed unimpressed by Francine's charm.

I had thought he might have kissed us or at least taken our hands. Instead he just looked at us as though there was something rather distasteful about us.

"I am your grandfather," he said, "and this is now your home. I hope you will be worthy of it. I doubt not that you will have much to learn. You are now in a civilized community. It will be well for you to remember that."

"We have always been in a civilized community," said Francine.

There was silence. I saw the woman seated beside my grandfather flinch.

"I would disagree with that," he said.

"Then you would be wrong," went on Francine. She was very nervous, I could see, but she sensed in his remarks a slur on our father and she was not going to tolerate that. She had immediately transgressed against the first rule of the house, which was that our grandfather was never wrong, and he was so startled that for a moment he was lost for words.

Then he spoke coldly: "Indeed you have much to learn. I had expected we might have to deal with uncouth manners. Well, we are prepared. Now the first thing to do is to give thanks to our Maker for your safe journey and we will express the hope that those of us in need of humility and gratitude will be granted these virtues, and will follow that course of righteousness which is the only one acceptable in this house."

We were bewildered. Francine was still smarting with her indignation and I was growing more depressed and afraid every moment.

And there we were, tired, hungry, bewildered and desperately apprehensive, kneeling on the cold floor in that dark room, giving thanks to God for bringing us to this prison and praying for the humility and gratitude which our grandfather expected us to feel to him for the miserable home he was giving us.

It was Aunt Grace who took us to our room. Poor Aunt Grace! When we referred to her it was always poor Aunt Grace. She looked drained of life; she was extremely thin and the brown cotton of her dress accentuated the sallowness of her complexion. Her hair, which might have been beautiful, was drawn straight back from her brow and plaited into a rather unwieldy knob in the nape of her neck; her eyes were pleasant, nothing could alter that. They were brown with abundant dark lashes—rather like Francine's except for the colour—only where my sister's sparkled, hers were dull and hopeless. Hopeless! That was the term one immediately applied to Aunt Grace.

We followed her up another staircase and she walked ahead, not speaking. Francine grimaced at me. It was rather a nervous grimace. I guessed that Francine was realizing she would not find it easy to charm such a household.

Aunt Grace opened a door and stepped into a room, standing aside so that we could enter. We did so. It was quite a pleasant room, but the dark curtains which half obscured the windows made it gloomy.

"You are to be together," said Aunt Grace. "Your grandfather thought there was no point in using two rooms."

I felt a sudden surge of pleasure. I should not have relished sleeping alone in that eerie mansion. I remembered Francine's once saying that nothing is all bad—or all good, for that matter; there had to be a little bit of the other, however slight. It was a comforting thought just now.

There were two beds in the room.

"You may choose how you will use them," said Aunt Grace as though, Francine afterwards remarked, she were offering us the kingdoms of the world.

She said, "Thank you, Aunt Grace."

"Now you will want to wash and perhaps change after the journey. We dine in an hour's time. Your grandfather will not tolerate unpunctuality."

"I am sure he will not," said Francine, and there was a note of hysteria in her voice. "It's so dark in here," she went on. "I can't see anything." She went to the windows and pulled back the curtains. "There! That's better. Oh, what a lovely view."

I went to the window and Aunt Grace came and stood immediately behind us.

"That is Rantown Forest down there," she said.

"It looks interesting. Forests always do. How far are we from the sea, Aunt Grace?"

"About ten miles."

Francine had turned to her. "I love the sea. We lived surrounded by it, you see. It makes you love it."

"Yes," said Aunt Grace, "I suppose it must. Now I will have hot water sent up to you."

"Aunt Grace," went on Francine, "you are our father's sister, yet you don't mention him. Don't you want to hear about your brother?"

I saw her face clearly in the light Francine had let in. It twitched and she looked as though she were going to cry. "Your grandfather has forbidden us to mention him," she said.

"Your own brother ..."

"He behaved—unforgivably. Your grandfather ..."

"He makes the laws here, I see," said Francine.

"I—I don't understand you." Aunt Grace was trying to look severe. "You are young," she went on, "and you have much to learn, and I will give you a piece of advice. Never, never again speak to your grandfather as you did today. You must never say he is wrong. He is—"

"Always right," added Francine. "Omnipotent, omniscient —like God, of course."

Aunt Grace suddenly put out a hand and touched Francine's arm. "You will have to be careful," she said almost pleadingly.

"Aunt Grace," I put in—for I thought I had glimpsed something which in her indignation Francine might have missed—and it was in that moment that my aunt became poor Aunt Grace for me, "are you glad that we have come?"

Her face twitched again, and there was a clouded look in her eyes. She nodded, and said, "I will send the hot water."

Then she was gone.

Francine and I stood looking at each other.

"I hate him," she said. "And our aunt ... what is she? A puppet."

Oddly enough, I was the one who could comfort Francine. Perhaps because she was older than I she could see more clearly what our lives would be like here. Perhaps I was clutching at straws for comfort.

"At least we are together," I reminded her.

She nodded and looked round the room.

"It's better now you've let in the light," I added.

"We'll make a vow. We'll never draw those hideous curtains again. I expect he ordered them to be put there to shut out the sun. He would hate the sun, wouldn't he? But, Pippa, they are all so dead. That woman who let us in ... the coachman ... It's like dying. Perhaps we are dead. Perhaps we had an accident on that train and this is Hades. We are waiting while it is decided whether we shall go to heaven or hell."

I laughed. It was good to laugh and soon she was laughing with me.

"Puppets," I said. "They are like puppets, but puppets can be jerked, you know."

"But look who is the puppet master!"

"We're not his puppets, Francine."

"Never!" she cried. "Never!"

"I think Aunt Grace is rather nice really. Poor Aunt Grace."

"Aunt Grace! She is nothing. 'Never again speak to your grandfather as you did today ...'" she mimicked. "I will if I want to!"

"He might turn us away. Where should we go if he did?"

It was a sobering thought and she was at a loss for words.

I put my hand in hers and said, "We have to wait, Francine. We have to wait... and plan."

Plans always excited Francine.

She said slowly, "You're right, Pippa. Yes, you are right. We have to bide our time ... and plan."

We lay in our beds without speaking for a long time. I was reliving that strange evening and I knew that Francine was doing the same.

We had washed and changed into the dresses of coloured cotton which we had always worn on the island. That they would seem incongruous here did not strike us until we joined our grandfather and aunt. Poor Aunt Grace's look of horror warned me. I saw our grandfather's cold eyes on us and I prayed that he would not provoke Francine beyond endurance. I had a vision of our being turned out, and although I was by no means enamoured of Greystone Manor and my relations, I realized that there could be worse fates than that which awaited us here.

We were taken into the dining room, which was large and should have been bright and colourful. But all that was needed to make a room mournful was our grandfather's presence. One single candle lighted the long and intricately carved table, and I found myself wondering what my father had felt when he had sat at that table. Because of its size we seemed a long way from each other. Grandfather was at one end, Aunt Grace at the other and Francine and I opposite each other.

We made a mistake in the first moment by sitting down when it was the custom at Greystone Manor to stand and say grace.

"Are you not prepared to thank your Maker for your food?" demanded our grandfather in a voice of thunder.

Francine pointed out that we had not had it yet.

"Savages," muttered my grandfather. "On your feet at once."

Francine looked at me and I thought she was going to refuse, but she didn't. Grace went on interminably. Our grandfather apologized to God for our ingratitude and promised this should not happen again. He gave thanks on our behalf and his voice went droning on until I felt frantic with hunger, for we had not eaten for some time.

At last it was over and we sat down. Our grandfather talked all the time about church affairs, about people on the estate and the difference our coming to the household would make, so that we felt we were going to be an encumbrance. Aunt Grace murmured yes or no at the appropriate moments and all through the monologue wore an expression of rapt attention.

"It would seem that you are without education. A governess should be found without delay. Grace, that will be your province."

"Yes, Father."

"I cannot have it said that my granddaughters are ignorant."

"We had a tutor on the island," said Francine. "He was very good. We have fluent Italian, both of us. Some French and quite good German—"

"We speak English here," interrupted my grandfather. "You clearly need to be educated in deportment and general behaviour."

"Our parents brought us up."

Aunt Grace looked so frightened that I threw a beseeching look at Francine, who interpreted it and hesitated.

"Grace," went on our grandfather, "you must take charge of your nieces until the governess arrives. Make them understand that in polite society such as ours, children speak only when they are spoken to. They are seen but not heard."

Even Francine seemed subdued, although she said afterwards that she was too hungry to want to argue with that dreadful old man and all she could think of was the food. Besides she had an idea that he might have some notion that little children should be sent to bed without their supper if they were recalcitrant, so she was playing it carefully ... just at first.

"Just at first!" That became our watchword in those early days. We would endure it until we discovered how we could escape from it. "But first," said Francine, "we must discover the lie of the land."

So on that first night we lay there silently for a while and then we went over the events of the day, recalling every detail of our encounter with our grandfather.

"He is the most horrible old man I ever met," said Francine. "I hated him from the moment I saw him. I'm not surprised Father said it was a prison and he escaped from it. We shall escape in time, Pippa."

Then she talked about the house. "What a place to explore! And just think, our ancestors lived there for hundreds of years. That's something to be proud of, Pippa. We've got to find a way of showing the old man that we don't think he is God and if he were I'd be an atheist. He is not the least interested in us. He is just doing his duty. If there is anything I could hate more than that old man it's being a duty to somebody."

"Well," I reminded her, "you've got both your worst hates under one roof."

That made us laugh. How thankful I was then for Francine ... as never before. I went to sleep thinking that while we were together, nothing was so bad.

The next day we made our discoveries. Hot water was brought by a maid. We were both asleep when it arrived as we had lain awake until late talking. That was when we first saw Daisy.

She was standing between our beds and laughing. I sat up with a start at the same time that Francine did. The realization of where we were came flooding over us and what struck us forcibly was that we were looking at someone who was actually laughing.

"You are a couple of sleepy 'eads," she said.

"Who are you?" asked Francine.

"I'm Daisy," she answered. "Under housemaid. I've been sent up with your wash water."

"Thank you," said Francine and she added in a tone of wonder, "You sound very cheerful."

"Bless you, Miss, ain't no sense in being aught else ... even in this 'ouse where a smile is thought to be a step along the road to 'ell."

"Daisy," said Francine, sitting up and shaking her fair curls out of her eyes, "how long have you been here?"

"Six months and it seems like twenty. I'll be moving on as soon as my luck turns. My, you're pretty."

"Thank you," said Francine.

"It won't be liked—not in this 'ouse. I'm said to be on the flighty side myself."

"Are you?" asked Francine.

Daisy gave a very pronounced wink which made us laugh.

"I'll tell you one thing," she said, "here's one who's glad you've come. Liven this old place up a bit. I'll tell you something else, there's more fun to be had in the old bone-yard than here." She laughed as though something struck her as very funny. "Yes, 'strue. There's a whole lot of fun to be had in the aforementioned place—that's if you haven't gone there to bury a loved one. Well, there's the living to think of, I always say. The dead has gone and none the worse they'll be thought of for having a bit of fun when they was alive."

This was an extraordinary conversation and Daisy herself seemed to realize it, for she brought it to an abrupt conclusion by saying, "Better look smart. The master don't like latecomers. And breakfast is at eight."

She went out, turning at the door to give us the benefit of that amazing wink."

"I like her," said Francine. "Daisy! I must say I'm surprised to find there is someone in this house whom we can like."

"It seems a good omen," I commented.

Francine laughed. "Come on, get dressed. We have to be at breakfast soon. Remember, our sainted grandfather does not like to be kept waiting. Moreover, he won't tolerate it. I wonder what today will bring forth."

"Let's wait and see."

"A very profound remark, dear sister, because there is simply nothing else we can possibly do."

Francine was back to her old self and that was comforting.

Breakfast was like a repetition of the previous meal with different food. There was plenty of that, which must be because, in spite of his saintliness, Grandfather liked his food. When we arrived he gave us a nod and as there were no complaints, I gathered we were not even a fraction of a second late. Grace was said at some length and then we were allowed to help ourselves from the sideboard after Grandfather and Aunt Grace had done so. There was sizzling bacon, devilled kidneys and eggs in various forms. How different from the fruit and brioche we had had on the island, rising when the mood took us and helping ourselves to whatever there was to eat, sometimes alone, sometimes together, while our father had often worked through the night in the studio to finish some masterpiece and would sleep long into the next day because of it!

This was very different. Here everything ran to order.

As he tackled his food with appreciative gusto, our grandfather barked out orders. Aunt Grace should get into immediate touch with Jenny Brakes. She should be summoned to the Manor without delay to make some suitable garments for his granddaughters. It was clear that on that outlandish island they had run loose like natives. They could scarcely be presented to the neighbourhood until they were suitably accoutred. I caught Francine's eyes and was alarmingly near to giggling. "He made us sound like Roman soldiers going into battle," she said afterwards.

Then Aunt Grace must find a suitable governess.

"Enquire of your friends at the rectory." I thought he spoke rather sneeringly and as Aunt Grace flushed slightly there seemed to be some subtlety in that remark, which I would report to Francine later if she had not noticed.

When Grandfather had finished eating he wiped his hands rather ceremoniously on his table napkin, flung it aside and rose ponderously to his feet. This was the signal for us all to rise. No one lingered at the table after he had decided the meal was terminated. "Like Queen Elizabeth," commented Francine. "Fortunately he appears to be a great trencherman so that gives us an opportunity to tuck a bit away too."

"First," he announced as he rose to his feet, "they should be taken to their grandmother."

We were astonished. We had forgotten that we had a grandmother. As no mention had been made of her, I had presumed she was dead.

Aunt Grace said, "Come with me."

We followed her. As we left we heard our grandfather say to the butler, "The bacon was not crisp enough this morning."

Following Aunt Grace, I thought how easy it would be to get lost in Greystone Manor. There were staircases in unexpected places and numerous long corridors with smaller ones turning off from them. Aunt Grace went on with the practised air of one who was well acquainted with the twists and turns of the house and she brought us at length to a door. She knocked and it was opened by a woman in a white cap and a black bombazine dress.

"Mrs. Warden, I have brought my nieces to see their grandmother."

"Yes. She is already waiting."

The woman looked at us and nodded. She had a serene face. I noticed this particularly because I had been aware of the lack of that quality in the house.

Aunt Grace led us in and there, seated on a chair beside a four-poster bed, was a little old lady in a frilled cap and a gown in which ribbons were threaded. She looked fragile. Aunt Grace went to her and kissed her and I was immediately aware of a different atmosphere in the room from that which prevailed in the rest of the house.

"Are they here?" asked the old lady.

"Yes, Mamma," replied Aunt Grace. "Francine is the elder. She is sixteen years old and Philippa is five years younger."

"Bring them to me."

First Francine was pushed forward. My grandmother lifted her hands and touched my sister's face. "Bless you," she said. "I am glad you have come."

"And this is Philippa." I was brought forward and the fingers gently touched my face.

Francine and I were silent. So she was blind.

"Come, my dears," she said, "sit one on either side of me. Have you stools for them, Agnes?"

Mrs. Warden brought two stools and we sat down. Our grandmother's fingers lingered on our hair. She was smiling. "So you are Edward's girls. Tell me about him. It was a sad day when he left us, but I understand. I hope he always knew I understood."

Francine had recovered from her surprise and began to talk about our father and how happy we had been on the island. I joined in now and then. That hour we spent with our grandmother was such a change from everything else we had found in this house.

Aunt Grace had left us to talk with her. She said she had many things to see to—the dressmaker and finding a governess, for instance. Her departure reminded us of the stern world outside this room. "Like an oasis in a desert," Francine was later to describe it.

Our grandmother was clearly delighted to have us with her, telling her everything she asked. She wanted to hear about our father most of all. The time flew past and once we had recovered from the initial shock her blindness had given us we were completely at home in that room.

"May we come to see you often?" I asked.

"As often as is possible," replied our grandmother. "I hope you will want to come."

Francine said, "Oh, we will. You are the first one who has made us feel that we are wanted here."

"Oh, you are wanted here. Your grandfather would not for one moment have considered refusing you a home." "He would consider it right and our grandfather is always right," said Francine with a hint of mockery. "But we don't want to be taken in because it is right, but because we are wanted and this is our home."

"You are wanted, child, and this is your home. I want you and my home is yours."

Francine took the thin white hand and kissed it.

"You've made it all so different," she said.

Mrs. Warden then said that Lady Ewell was a little tired. "She tires easily," she whispered, "and this has been an excitement to her. You must come again and see her often."

"Oh, we will, we will," cried Francine.

We kissed the soft cheek and were ushered out of the room by Agnes Warden.

We were standing in the corridor uncertain which way to turn, and Francine looked at me with sparkling eyes. "Now is our chance to explore the house," she said. "We have lost our way and have to find it, don't we?"

We held hands and ran along the corridor.

"We are very high up," said Francine, "right at the top of the house."

At the end of the corridor there was a window. We went to it and looked out.

"It's beautiful," commented Francine. "Different from the island and the sea ... beautiful in a different way. All those trees and the forest over there and the greenness of everything. If our grandfather were like our grandmother I could begin to like it here."

I stood close to my sister, feeling the comfort of her presence. Nothing could be really bad while we could share it.

"Oh look," she cried. "There's a house over there. It looks interesting."

"It's old, I think."

"Tudor, I'd say," said Francine knowledgeably. "All that red brick ... and it looks like leaded windows. I like it. We'll have to go and have a look at that."

"I wonder what this governess will be like?"

"They have to find her first. Come on, let's go and explore."

We descended a small spiral staircase and came to a landing. We walked through a door and were in a long room with a spinning wheel at one end.

"This is a voyage of exploration," said Francine. "We are now going to discover all the nooks and crannies, the dark secrets of our ancestral home."

"How do you know there are dark secrets?"

"There are always dark secrets. Besides, you can feel them here. Now this would be called the solarium, I believe, because it gets the sun for most of the day—hence the windows on either side. It's beautiful. There should be parties and balls and lots of people here. If ever I inherit, that is how it shall be."

"You inherit? Francine, how could you?"

"I'm in the line of succession surely. Father was the only son. Aunt Grace is not likely to prove fruitful. Perhaps she is the crown princess—the heir apparent. I could be the heir presumptive. It depends how they work these things out."

I was laughing aloud and so was she. She could be relied on to bring laughter to most situations.

We went through the solarium and along another corridor, up a staircase similar to that by which we had descended, and found a passage full of bedrooms with the inevitable four-posters and the heavy drapes and dark furniture.

We descended once more and came to a gallery.

"Family portraits," mused Francine, "and look. I am sure that is one of King Charles the First. Charles the Martyr; and those gentlemen who all look rather like him. I bet we were loyal to the monarchy. I wonder if our father is here. Perhaps we shall be—you and I, Pippa."

We heard footsteps and an agitated Aunt Grace burst in on us.

"Oh, there you are. I've been up to your grandmother's room to warn you. I couldn't find you. You'll be late for the service."

"The service?" asked Francine.

"We have three minutes in which to get there. Your grandfather will be most displeased ..."

Poor Grace. She would probably be blamed. Francine and I ran with her.

The chapel was reached by a flight of steps from the main hall. It was small, as chapels go, made to accommodate the family and servants, who were all assembled there when, breathless, we arrived.

I saw the curious eyes of the servants on us and was amazed by their number. Seated right at the back was the maid Daisy, who had brought our hot water. Our eyes met and she gave me one of her winks. The rest of them looked very demure, eyes lowered as we were hustled to our seats in the front row.

Our grandfather, already seated, looked neither to the right nor to the left. Aunt Grace sidled in beside him, then Francine and next to her myself.

The service was conducted by a young man who must have been in his middle twenties. He was tall and very thin with restless dark eyes, and hair that looked almost black beside the pallor of his skin.

We sang hymns of praise, and there was a good deal of praying when we stayed on our knees for what seemed an interminable length of time. Then the young man gave an address, during which he reminded everyone of the care of the Almighty who had brought them to Greystone Manor where they found food and shelter and all that was necessary not only for their physical, but for their spiritual comfort.

Our grandfather sat through this with his arms folded and now and then would nod in agreement. Then there was a song of praise, more prayers and the service was over. It had lasted only half an hour but it had seemed endless. The servants all filed out, and we were left with our grandfather, Aunt Grace and the young man—some sort of parson, I imagined.

Our grandfather was not exactly smiling, but he was looking with approval at the young man.

"Arthur," he said, "I wish you to meet your cousins."

"Cousins!" I sensed Francine's surprise. It could not have been greater than mine.

"The Reverend Arthur Ewell," said our grandfather. "Your cousin is in holy orders. You did not meet him last night as he was administering spiritual comfort to a sick neighbour. I am glad you arrived back in time for the service, Arthur."

The Reverend Arthur bowed his head with a sort of smug humility and said that Mrs. Glencorn seemed to have profited from their prayers.

"Arthur, your cousin Francine."

Arthur bowed rather curtly.

"How do you do, Cousin Arthur," said Francine.

"And," went on our grandfather, "this is the younger of your cousins, Philippa."

The dark eyes of Cousin Arthur surveyed me rather briefly, I thought, but I was used to people's greater interest in my sister.

"Your spiritual welfare will be in good hands," went on our grandfather. "And please remember that the meeting in the chapel takes place every morning at eleven. Everyone in the household attends."

Francine could not suppress her comment: "I can see that our spiritual welfare will receive a great deal of attention."

"We shall make sure of that," said our grandfather. "Arthur, would you like to have a word in private with your cousins? You might wish to discover what religious education they have had. I fear you may receive rather a shock."

Arthur said he thought that would be an excellent idea.

Our grandfather and Aunt Grace went out of the chapel, leaving us to the mercy of Cousin Arthur.

He suggested we sit down and began asking us questions. He was shocked to hear that we had not been to church on the island but perhaps that was as well, as the natives were probably of the Catholic faith—natives often were and worshipped idols.

"Lots of people worship idols," Francine reminded him. "Not necessarily gods of stone, but sets of rules and conventions which sometimes result in the suppression of loving kindness."

Arthur kept looking at her and although his expression was disapproving I saw a gleam in his eyes which I had noticed in people before when they looked at Francine.

We talked to him for a while—at least Francine did. He had little to say to me. I was sure during that time she thoroughly shocked him with what she told him of our upbringing and he would tell our grandfather that intensive instruction would be needed to bring us to grace.

When we escaped from him it was almost time for the midday meal. Afterwards we might like a little exercise, suggested Aunt Grace, and could take a walk in the gardens. It would not be wise for us to stray beyond them, and would we remember to be in by four o'clock when tea was taken in the red drawing room which led off from the hall. She herself was going to the vicarage. There was something of importance she had to see the vicar about. We should be able to go visiting when we had suitable clothes—and that would not be long, for Jenny Brakes would arrive tomorrow morning with materials and the dressmaking session would begin.

"Freedom," cried Francine, when we were alone. "And stay in the garden! Never! We are going to look round, and our first mission shall be to take a closer look at that interesting old house we saw from the window."

"Francine," I said, "I believe you are starting to enjoy this."

It was true, she was. She was fascinated by Greystone Manor and each hour brought fresh revelations. She sensed some sort of battle ahead and it was just what she needed to recover from the shock of our parents' deaths. I knew this because I felt the same myself.

So in a spirit of adventure we set out that afternoon. We had two hours or so to ourselves. We must be back in time for tea, said Francine. It would never do for them to discover that we had been adventuring on our own. "They must believe that we have been meandering through the garden paths," she went on, "admiring the orderliness of everything, for I am sure it is orderly, and exclaiming every now and then on the excellence of our grandfather, who is so holy that I wonder he is not considered too good for this earth."

We were careful until we came through the drive and slipped out by the lodge gate. Fortunately the occupants of the lodge were out of sight. Perhaps the hour of our grandfather's siesta was their only time for relaxation.

We were in a road bounded on either side by high hedges, and when we came to a gate Francine suggested we pass through it and cross the field, for she was sure that was the direction in which the house lay.

This we did, and at the top of the field was a row of four cottages and outside one of these was a woman shaped rather like a cottage loaf, with hair which straggled out of a bun at the back of her head while the light breeze played with the straying strands.

She looked up as we approached. I supposed she did not see many people, for she was obviously surprised.

"Good-day to you," she called, and as we came closer I saw the curiosity in her lively dark eyes, and there was a look of extreme interest and pleasure on her rather plump face. One noticed these things after even such a short time at Greystone Manor, where the general rule was to look solemn and glum.

"Good-day," we answered.

She had been pegging wet clothes on a line, which was fixed to a post at one end and attached to the side of the cottage on the other. Removing a peg from her mouth she said, "You the new young ladies up at Greystone." It was, a statement rather than a question.

Francine said we were and how did she know?

"Why, God love you, there's not much I don't know about what goes on up at Greystone. My girl's up there." Her eyes widened as she stared at Francine. "My, you're pretty. Not what you expected up there, was it?"

"We didn't know what to expect," said Francine.

"Well, we knew Mr. Edward. He was a good man, he was —not like ... Oh no, he was different, he was ... and that lovely young girl he ran off with ... Pretty as a picture, and you, Miss, you're the spitting image of her. I reckon I'd have known you anywhere—picked you out I could."

"It's nice that you knew our father and mother," said Francine.

"Dead ... both of them. Well, that's life, ain't it? The best often goes ... and the rest stays on." She nodded her head, momentarily sad. Then she was smiling again. "You'll know our Daise."

"Daise," we both said simultaneously. "Oh ... Daisy."

"Got herself a job up there. Under housemaid. Mind you, I don't know if it will last. Our Daise is a bit of a caution." The woman winked in a way which reminded me of Daisy herself. They must be a winking family, I commented afterwards to Francine.

"Always a bit of a wild one," went on the woman. "I didn't know what to do with her. I say to her, 'You mark my words, Daise, you'll be in trouble one day.' She laughs at that. I don't know. She always liked the boys and the boys liked her. It was the same even when she was in her cradle. I've got six of them. She's my eldest, too. I said to Emms—he's their father, you know—I said, 'Now, Emms, this is enough.' But would you believe it, there's another on the way. What can you do with a man like Emms? But we got Daise to the big house. I thought if this can't make her respectable, nothing can."

"We have met Daise," said Francine. "Just once. She brought us hot water. We liked her."

"She's a good girl ... at heart. It's just the boys. Can't seem to stay away from them. I was a bit like that myself at one time. Well, it makes the world go on."

Francine said, "What is the big Tudor house over there?"

"That's Granter's Grange." She began to laugh. "Regular old to-do that caused."

"We thought it looked interesting and we should like to see it closer."

"It was bought by foreigners ... that's a year or two ago. Sir Matthew wanted it but he didn't get it. That's upset him. He thinks he owns these parts—and he does in a way.

But Granter's Grange ... well, the foreigners got in before him."

"Who are the foreigners?"

"Oo ... now you're asking! Very high-up foreigners ... Grand Dukes and things—but from some outlandish place. They don't count for much round here."

"Grand Dukes," whispered Francine.

"Oh, they're not there now. They're not often there. They come and go. The place is all covered up and left, and then servants come and there's a regular spring clean, then the Dukes come. It's all very grand—royal stuff. Your grandfather doesn't like it...he doesn't like it at all.

"Is it really any concern of his?" asked Francine.

That made Mrs. Emms roar with laughter and produce one of her winks. "He reckons so. He's the lord of this place. Emms says the Queen herself couldn't be more of a sovereign over all England than Sir Matthew Ewell is over us all here ... begging your pardon, he being your grandfather."

"There's no need to ask pardon. I think we agree with you," said Francine, "although we have not seen much yet. Are the Grand Dukes in residence now?"

"Oh, bless you no, and hasn't been these last two months. But they'll be here—oh yes, they'll be here. It makes a bit of excitement. You never know, you see. One day I'll look out of my back windows and I'll see them there. They're just at the back of me so I get the best view."

"Well, we'll go and look at it," said Francine. "We haven't much time. We have to be back by four. So the house is just at the back of you."

"Yes ... look. There's a short cut round by the cottages, you can't miss it. Through the hedge and there you are."

"Thank you, Mrs. Emms. We hope we shall see more of you."

She nodded and winked again. Francine said, "Come on, Pippa."

So we came to the house. There was a deep silence everywhere and a great excitement gripped me. I am sure Fran-cine felt the same and I wondered afterwards whether it was a premonition because this house was going to play such an important part in our lives.

There was the gate supported by marble columns and an archway on which we could just make out the date: 1525. We unlatched the gate and went in. I reached for Francine's hand and she gripped mine tightly. We almost tiptoed across the stretch of lawn, which was overgrown and spotted with daisies. We reached the house and I put out a hand to touch the red bricks. They were warm from the sun. Francine was looking in through the window. She gave a little gasp and turned pale.

"What is it?" I cried.

"There's someone ... standing there ... a ghost ... in white."

I began to tremble, but I pressed my face against the glass. I started to laugh. "It's a piece of furniture," I said. "It's covered over with a dust sheet. It does look like someone standing there."

She looked again and then we were rolling about in an excess of mirth which perhaps had a touch of hysteria in it. There was something about the house which affected us deeply.

We walked round it; we looked in through all the lower windows. Everywhere the furniture was covered in dust sheets.

"It must be wonderful," I said, "when the Grand Dukes come."

Francine tried the door. It was of course locked. There was a gargoyle on a sort of knocker which seemed to be jeering at us.

"I'm sure he moved," said Francine.

"This is a place where you could fancy things," I reminded her.

She agreed. "Imagine coming here at night. I'd like to."

I shivered, fearful that she might suggest it. "Let's look at the gardens," I said. We did. The lawns were mostly all in need of attention. There were groves, statues, colonnades and little pathways through shrubberies.

I said, "We should go back. We're not quite sure of the way and if we're late and they find out we haven't been walking in the gardens—"

"Come on then," she said. "Let's go back past the cottages."

We did with great speed for it was half past three. Daisy's mother was not there, but the line of flapping washing showed that she had completed her task.

We ran all the way back and were punctual at the tea table and as we listened to the usual grace, we were both thinking of the afternoon's adventure.

We saw Daisy next morning when she came in with our hot water. We told her that we had met her mother and she laughed with pleasure.

"Good old Ma," she said. "Was she pleased to get her eldest respectable!"

"Are you respectable then, Daisy?" asked Francine.

"Oh, as near as makes no difference. You've got the dressmaker coming today. Pity. I like your little frocks. They're pretty."

"We don't see you during the day," said Francine.

"Working in the kitchens, that's me."

"It was nice seeing your mother. She told us about Granter's Grange."

"Ah, that's a place I'd like to be at."

"There's no-one there."

"When there is it will be a real sight, I can tell you. Balls and fetes. They do themselves proud. A lot of people come over from abroad. They say it belongs to a King or something."

"A Grand Duke," your mother said.

"She'd know. Reckon she talks with the servants up there. Foreigners, most of them, but trust Ma."

She winked and went out, and we hastily dressed to be in time for breakfast.

It was very much the same as the previous day. In fact, I was beginning to think that once we had settled into a routine every day was going to be like every other. We visited our grandmother again; Aunt Grace collected us in time to be at the service at the chapel and told us that the rest of the morning would be spent with Jenny Brakes, and we should have dresses which were suitable; we should have a governess who might well arrive within the week and there would be religious instruction from our Cousin Arthur. Our grandfather had said that we must be taught to ride as that was part of a gentlewoman's training. So it seemed our days would be well accounted for.

We got through the chapel service and Francine confided to me that she heartily disliked Cousin Arthur, largely because he looked so virtuous and grandfather clearly had a high opinion of him. Poor little Jenny Brakes was so pale and overeager to please that I felt sorry for her and stood as still as I could while she knelt beside me with a mouthful of pins and adjusted the dark blue serge which I disliked intensely.

So did Francine. "We're going to look as dismal as Greystone Manor," she commented. She was wrong, for she could never look dismal and the navy blue serge of our everyday dresses and the brown poplin of our best ones only accentuated her fair beauty and, by its contrast, her charm. They were not so kind to me. I hated the colours which did not suit my darkness, but I was glad that our new clothes had not spoilt Francine's looks.

That our coming had made a subtle change to the household was obvious to everyone, I think—except perhaps our grandfather. He was so immersed in his own importance and piety that I imagine he rarely thought anything or anyone else of any significance. He wouldn't have known that our grandmother grew quite excited at the prospect of our morning visits. I believe he paid daily visits—as was his duty —and I could imagine what they would be like.

Within a week our governess had arrived. Miss Elton was in her mid-thirties, with brown hair severely parted in the middle and worn in a little knot at the nape of her neck; she wore severe grey gowns on weekdays and a dark-blue one on Sundays, which did honour to the Sabbath by sporting a lace collar. She tested us and found us abysmally ignorant, except in one respect—languages. She spoke fair French herself, but her German was excellent. She told us afterwards that her mother had been German and she had been brought up to speak that language as well as English. She was delighted with our proficiency and said we must aim to perfect it. It would certainly be one of the subjects we studied with enthusiasm. She was obsequious to our grandfather and gently polite to Aunt Grace.

"Subservient," commented Francine slightingly.

"Don't you understand?" I replied warmly. "She wants to keep her post here. She's afraid of losing it. So be kind to her and see her point of view."

Francine looked at me thoughtfully, "Do you know, sister Philippa," she said, "you have a certain wisdom and you can put yourself in other people's places better than most. It's a rare gift."

"Thank you," I replied gratified; and I noticed that she was beginning to respect my judgement more and more. I was quieter than she was, more observant perhaps. I sometimes thought it was because I was more on the edge of things, an observer rather than a main actor. Francine, with her outstanding looks and personality, would always be at the centre of events, and sometimes people like that did not see as clearly as those who were slightly removed from the scene.

However, she accepted my view of the governess and instead of teasing her as she might have done, she became quite a docile pupil and after the first days of strangeness we established a certain rapport with Miss Elton, and lessons went fairly well.

We were now having riding lessons, which we both enjoyed. These were conducted under the supervision of the coachman who had met us at the station, and usually there was his son Tom, who worked as a stable-boy and must have been about eighteen or nineteen years of age. He had to prepare the horses and take them after the lessons. We spent hours riding round the first paddock on leading reins, then without. I was proud when he said, "Miss Philippa, you're a natural. You're going to be a rider, you are." "And what of me?" Francine asked. "Oh, you'll get by, Miss, I reckon," was the answer. I couldn't help being thrilled—it was the first time I had ever excelled over Francine—but almost immediately I felt apologetic and ashamed of my feelings. But I need not have done. Francine was delighted for me. .

One day she took a toss as we were cantering round the paddock. I was horrified and when I saw her lying on the ground I realized how very much she meant to me. I was off my horse and running to her, but Tom was already there.

Francine grimaced at us and got up rather gingerly. She was moved by my emotion, which I couldn't hide, and she pretended to laugh at it. "It's what happens to those who are not naturals," she said.

"Francine, you are all right? You are sure? ..."

"I think so."

"You're all right, Miss," said Tom. "You'll feel it tomorrow, though. You'll want some liniment to put on the bruises. Reckon you'll have some beauties. Never mind, they'll be where they don't show. I'll send Daise up with the liniment. Just one application. No more. It's strong stuff and would have the skin off you in no time."

"Ought I to get on the brute who threw me and show him I'm the. one in command?"

Tom grinned. "Oh, he knows who that is, Miss, and it ain't you—not yet, but it will be. I'd go and lie down if I was you. It's best. Then ride tomorrow."

"Yes," I said. "I'll go up with you and Daisy can come down at once for the liniment."

I took Francine to our room, still anxious about her.

"Don't look so worried, Pippa," she said. "It'll take more than that miserable old nag to kill me."

I sent for Daisy and told her to get the liniment. "Tom's expecting you," I said. "He'll be down in the stables."

"I know where to find Tom," she replied and went off. She was soon back with the liniment and we applied it to the bruises, which were already beginning to show.

I insisted that Francine should lie down, although she declared that she felt all right. Daisy came in and said should she take the liniment back and I said she could, as we had finished with it.

Francine lay down and I was standing at the window when I saw Daisy running towards the stables. Tom came out to meet her. They stood for a moment very close. She held out the liniment to him; he took it and with it her arm. He was dragging her towards the stables and she was pretending not to want to go, but I could see that she was laughing. I thought of her mother's remarks: "She's a one for the boys."

"What are you looking at?" asked Francine.

I replied: "Daisy and Tom. They seem to be having a game of some sort."

Francine laughed and Aunt Grace came in then. She was all concern. We must expect the occasional mishap, she said, and hoped no harm was done.

Francine said faintly, "Aunt Grace, I don't feel well enough to come down to dinner tonight. May I have something sent up?"

"Of course."

"And Aunt Grace, could Philippa have hers up here too? In case I ..."

"It shall be arranged," said Aunt Grace. "Now you rest. And Philippa, stay with your sister."

"Oh, I will, Aunt Grace."

She left us and when she had gone Francine started to laugh. "Just think. We'll miss one of the appalling meals. Both of us. Out of evil cometh good."

It was almost an hour later when I saw Daisy emerging from the stables. I was sitting in the window talking to Francine, who was still lying down. Daisy's hair was rumpled and she was buttoning up her blouse. She ran swiftly into the house.

Francine was rather more affected than we had first thought, and the next morning the bruises were violently marked. Daisy screamed at the sight of them and said she would go and see Tom at once because he might have something.

However, within a few days they started to subside and Francine was riding again. Cousin Arthur expressed a certain concern and warned Francine that she should pray before she took her lesson. It might be that God would give heed to her safety.

"Oh, I expect He's too busy to bother about that," said Francine flippantly. "Just imagine! When He's contemplating some universal problem, an angel runs in and says it's time for Francine Ewell's riding lesson and You let her fall off the other day. Shall we send out a guardian angel? She has said her prayers."

She enjoyed shocking Cousin Arthur. In fact, she disliked him as much as she did our grandfather, and there was a growing animosity between Francine and the old man. I think that, being quieter and less noticeable, I appeared to be more biddable. He recognized in Francine the rebel—like our father—and he was watchful of her. He probably thought I was more like Aunt Grace. I was determined not to be.

I looked forward to our visits to our grandmother. Her face used to light up when we came in and she would hold out her hands and let her fingers explore our faces. Agnes Warden would hover round while our grandmother talked about the past, and of course we wanted to hear. Although she was old—of a different world from our own—we could talk to her openly. Constantly she asked us questions about the island, and I think within a week she had a clear picture of it. Francine, who was always frank and perhaps spoke before she had considered her words, asked her how she could ever have come to marry our grandfather.

"It was arranged," she said. "It always is with people like us, you know."

"But our father didn't do what his father wanted," Francine pointed out.

"There would always be the rebels, my dear, even in those days. Your father was one. Odd ... he was a quiet boy. You remind me of him, Philippa. He was purposeful, as I think you would be, if the occasion arose. But I was very young when I married your grandfather. I was sixteen—your age now, Francine. But I seemed much younger. I knew nothing of life."

Francine's face expressed her horror. Married to my grandfather at the same age as herself! I think it was hard for Francine to imagine a worse fate. Francine had not spoken, but it was amazing how sensitive Grandmother was to a mood. She said at once, "Oh, he was different then. He has grown away from the young man he was."

"Poor Grandmother," said Francine, kissing her hand.

"Of course," went on our grandmother, "he ruled the household with his rod of iron right from the first. He was content with the marriage because it joined up the lands, you see, and he had always cared passionately about the family's estate. It has been with the Ewells for so long, it is understandable. We Granters were considered to be something of upstarts by him. We had only been in the Grange for a hundred years or so."

"That's the Tudor house."

"Yes ... yes. Oh, there was trouble about that. My brother refused to sell it to your grandfather. He wanted it very much. He could not bear that anything—just anything —in the neighbourhood did not belong to him. You see, he now owns the whole of the Granter's estate—except the Grange. Much of it came with me as my dowry, but there was a larger portion which went to my brother. He wasn't the clever businessman your grandfather was. He lost most of it. He said your grandfather cheated him. It wasn't true, of course, but there was a quarrel and although your grandfather acquired most of the estate, my brother was determined not to let him have the Grange. He sold it to a foreigner—someone from an embassy in some far-away country. I think it was Bruxenstein ... or something like that."

"That house fascinated me," said Francine.

"It means something to me," said our grandmother. "It was my old home."

She was silent for a while and I knew Francine was remembering, as I was, how we had peered through the windows and thought we saw a ghost.

"It's not used a great deal," said my grandmother. "Agnes tells me they come here from time to time, and then they go away and it's neglected again. And when they come back, in a flash it's full of life again. A strange way to go on. I heard that when they originally bought it, it was for one of their exiled noblemen and that after he'd been in residence for a month or two there was some coup in the country and he went back again."

"They could have sold the house to our grandfather then," said Francine.

"No, they wanted to keep it. Perhaps they wanted it for another exile. There is always trouble, I believe, in those small German states. We heard that they change their rulers from time to time. Grand Dukes ... or Margraves—whatever they call them. However, it is strange to think of those sort of people in my old home."

"Romantic," added Francine, and my grandmother gently ruffled her hair.

I could see that Francine was getting more and more interested in the Grange now that she knew that it had been our grandmother's home; she said she was pleased that the romantic princes or whatever they were had secured it and Grandfather had been outdone for once in his life.

On another occasion our grandmother told us about our father and Aunt Grace. She blossomed when she talked with us, and her great pleasure in our company seemed to have made her younger. I could almost see her as a bride coming to Greystone Manor, a young girl who did not know what marriage was about. We were thankful that we were not ignorant on that score. They had been a passionate race on the island and we had often seen lovers lying on the beaches, wrapped in an embrace; we knew that when some of the girls became pregnant it was due to those embraces and I was fully aware that they had forestalled their marriages. I knew too what Mrs. Emms had meant when she had said Daisy was a one for the boys, and I could guess what had happened when she had gone into the stables with Tom.

But our grandmother's coming to marriage must have been a great shock, and I could not imagine our grandfather as a tender lover. "He was a passionate man in those days," said our grandmother. "He longed for children and was overjoyed when your father was born. He began planning from that day. I was unfortunate in my efforts afterwards, and it was not until five years later that Grace was born. Your grandfather was disappointed because she was a girl. He never cared for her as he did for Edward. He thought Edward was going to be just such another as himself. These plans always go wrong. Then there was Charles Daventry."

"Tell us about him," prompted Francine.

Our grandmother needed no persuasion. "Edward went to Oxford and from that time everything went wrong. Before that, he was interested in the estate. Your grandfather was stern and strict as you can imagine, but there was never any real friction between them until he went to Oxford. It was there that he met Charles. Charles was a sculptor and the two of them had a great deal in common. They became close friends. Edward brought him home during the vacation and your grandfather took an immediate dislike to him. He disliked artists of any sort. He used to say they were dreamers and no good to themselves or to anybody."

"Our father was a great artist," said Francine hotly. "He should have been recognized. I think he will be one day. ... All those beautiful things he made ... they're scattered all over the world. One day ..."

It was the Francine of the studio days who was impressing the customers.

Our grandmother patted her hand. "You loved him dearly," she said. "He was very lovable. Your grandfather said there was no money to be made from chipping stone, but while it was a hobby he was prepared to tolerate it. There ,was Grace too. She was shy and retiring ... but pretty in those days. She was like a young fawn—brown eyes, brown hair; very pretty hair she had in those days. I remember they used to go to the graveyard together, all three of them. They were all interested in the stone statues on the graves. Charles Daventry was a nephew of the present vicar, and the two young men got into touch because of this connection. It was strange how they should both have this taste for sculpting, but I suppose that was why they became great friends."

"I think people should be allowed to do what they want in this life," said Francine hotly.

"Ah yes," agreed our grandmother, "and the strong-willed ones do! Your father made up his mind in the end. I have never seen your grandfather so shocked as he was when he knew that Edward had left. He just could not believe it. You know that your mother came here to sew."

"Yes, we knew that," Francine told her.

"She was exceptionally pretty—dainty as a fairy, and your father loved her from the moment he saw her."

"Until the moment he died," I added quietly.

I felt my grandmother's fingers caressing my hair and I knew that she understood I was near to tears.

"They went off together. Your father did not see your grandfather before he went. He told me though. He said, 'You will understand, Mother, that I cannot talk to Father. That's his tragedy. No-one can talk to him. If only he would listen sometimes ... I think he would have been spared a lot of dissatisfaction.' He did suffer when Edward went, though he wouldn't admit it. He raged and stormed and cut him out of his will. I think he was hoping Edward would have a son who would come back here to us."

"And all he had was two daughters!" said Francine.

"Now that I know you, I wouldn't have had it different. After your father had gone, your grandfather turned to Grace. But she had grown fond of Charles Daventry and he was out of the question."

"Why?" asked Francine.

"Well, your grandfather said he was no match for her. He came to live here ... I think it was to be near Grace. He has a small place adjoining the vicarage—a sort of yard I suppose you would call it, and there he makes his statues. People buy them for graves and our graveyard is noted for some of the fine figures and effigies he does. He is said to be very clever, but it is a poor living. Fortunately for Charles he can live with his uncle at the vicarage. He does certain jobs in the parish too. He's a delightful man ... a bit of a dreamer. He and Grace ... well, it's hopeless really. He's not in a position to marry and your grandfather would never hear of it."

"Poor Grace," I said.

"Poor Grace ... yes," echoed our grandmother. "She is a good woman. She never complains but I sense a sadness... ."

"It's monstrous!" cried Francine. "How dare people interfere with the lives of others!"

"It takes a strong will to go against your grandfather, and Grace always avoided trouble. When she was a little girl she used to hide away until it was over. Your grandfather washed his hands of Grace. He then started to show an interest in his younger brother's boy—your cousin Arthur."

Francine grimaced with distaste.

"He's been Arthur's guardian since the boy was sixteen. That was when Arthur's father was killed in Africa. His mother had gone into a decline some years before. Your grandfather said Arthur was young enough to be moulded. Arthur's father had not left a great deal and your grandfather took over the boy's education. When he heard that he wanted to go into the Church he did not deter him. Your grandfather, as you know, is a very religious man. There was no reason why Arthur should not take holy orders even though he was intended to inherit the estate. One great point in his favour is his name. He's a Ewell and it is very important in your grandfather's eyes to keep the name alive. Francine ... how do you like your cousin Arthur?"

"How do I like him?" cried Francine. "I don't like him in any way. The answer is, Not at all."

Our grandmother was silent.

"Why are you disturbed?" I asked.

Our grandmother reached out for Francine's hand. "I think I should warn you," she said. "Your grandfather has plans. Arthur is a sort of second cousin to you it is true, but second cousins marry."

"Marry!" cried Francine. "Cousin Arthur!"

"You see, my dear, it would make a neat solution and your grandfather loves neat solutions. You are his granddaughter and your children would be in direct line, but he does not want the name of Ewell to die out. So if you married Arthur, your children would be Ewells and a direct descendant would carry on the family. It won't come for about a year or so, but Francine, my dear, I did not want it to be a shock when it did come."

We were silent with horror. I knew Francine wanted to get away to discuss this fearful possibility.

We had talked it over and over. We had discussed what we should do if it were ever suggested. We should have to get away, said Francine. Where to? We would lie in bed talking about it. Perhaps we could go back to the island. To do what? How could we live? We should have to go and work somewhere. Could she be a governess? Francine wondered. And what of me? What should I do? "You would have to stay here until you were old enough to get away."

But then we should be separated and that must never be.

For a few days the shadow hung over us while Francine's distaste for Cousin Arthur grew. During religious instruction she was curt with him. I was surprised how meekly he took it. Then it occurred to me that she might be having the same effect on him as she had had on many others. In his mild and very proper way he was rather attracted by her. But perhaps this was due to the fact that he knew our grandfather intended them to marry.

It was not like Francine to be depressed for long and after those first few days of gloom she began to recover her spirits. It wouldn't be for a long time. She was only sixteen. It was true our grandmother had been sixteen when she had married, but there was time to start worrying when it was suggested to her. In the meantime she would indicate to Cousin Arthur that her feelings towards him were very cold indeed, and perhaps his pride would stop him pursuing the matter. Moreover the older she grew the easier it would be to find a solution. So the matter was shelved.

After what we had heard of Aunt Grace's romance our curiosity led us to the yard close to the vicarage and there we made the acquaintance of Charles Daventry. We liked him at once because he reminded us of our father, and because of who we were he was interested in us.

He made tea on an old spirit lamp in his workshop and we sat on stools drinking it and telling him about the island and how we had lived there. He showed us some of his models. I fancied most of the women had a look of Aunt Grace.

He was a sad, quiet man, Francine said of him afterwards. "He makes me impatient. They deserve their fate because they just let life flow over them ... tossing them wherever it wants to. They make no effort. That's no way to live. We'll never be like that, Pippa. Our father wasn't, was he? We won't let that old patriarch rule our lives."

Summer had come. The countryside was beautiful—in a different way from that of the island. I realized that there had been a sameness about the blue sea which only changed when the rain came and the mistral blew. Here everything seemed different almost every day and it was wonderful to see the burgeoning of the trees—the forming of the buds and the bursting into flower, the blossoming of the fruit trees, wild roses and strawberries in the hedgerows and mayflies dancing over the water on the ponds, to listen to the cries of birds and try to recognize them, to see the bluebells under the trees and later the foxgloves, the honeysuckle filling the air with its sweet perfume—and the long twilight hour which made one feel that the daylight was reluctant to depart. I had a feeling that I had come home, which was strange when I had been born on the island and had lived most of my life there.

I liked to be alone and lie in the long grass listening to the sound of the grasshoppers and the buzzing of the bees who were marauding the purple buddleia or the sweet-smelling lavender. I thought then: This is peace. And I wanted to hold time still and stay like this for a long while. This was probably because I sensed a menace in the air. We were getting older. Soon our grandfather would be making his wishes known to Francine and she would never obey. What then? Should we be turned away?

I remembered how our father had talked to me when we had sat outside the studio and he had looked over the sea with a kind of nostalgia which all exiles must feel at some time. He quoted to me what he called my song. "Pippa's Song," he would say, "written by a great poet who knew what it was like to long for home."

The year's at the spring And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hillside's dew-pearled; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn: God's in his heaven-All's right with the world.

I felt it, lying there in the grass. "All's right with the world." And just for that moment I could forget the gathering clouds.

"The clouds pass," my father used to say. "Sometimes you get a drenching. But then the sun shines and afterwards all's right with the world."

Later that day Francine and I took our walk and it led us past Granter's Grange. We hardly ever passed it without taking a look through the windows at the shrouded furniture and Francine wailed as she invariably did, "Oh, Grand Duke, when are you coming to enliven the scene?" I always pointed out that it would make no difference to us whether they came or stayed away, to which she said that it would be nice to have a glimpse of grandeur.

We went to see Charles Daventry. We liked to watch him work. He was glad to see us and liked to tell us stories of the life he and our father had led at Oxford, and how they had had grand plans for sharing a studio in London or Paris and having a sort of salon where artists and the literati assembled.

"You see what tricks life plays," said Charles. "Your father ends up in an island studio and I am here ... a sort of stonemason. What else?"

"It's what you want," Francine pointed out. "If you take what you want, you must take the consequences with it."

"Ah, we have a philosopher here," said Charles.

"As I see it, you have to be bold in life," Francine went on. In her heart she continued to be impatient with him because he was living here alone and Aunt Grace was at Greystone Manor, and neither of them had the courage to defy our grandfather.

Francine leaped up suddenly and said we must go, and as she did so she tripped over a block of stone. She picked herself up and tried to stand, but found she could not do so. She would have fallen if I had not caught her.

"I can't put my foot to the ground," she said.

"It's a sprain, most like," said Charles, kneeling and feeling her ankle.

"I'll have to get back. How?"

"There's only one way."

Charles lifted her up and carried her. When we arrived at the house there was tremendous excitement. Daisy came dashing out, her mouth a round "O" of astonishment when she saw Francine was being carried and when she realized by whom, her excitement increased. She went to get Aunt Grace, who turned red and then white. I learned afterwards that Charles had been forbidden to enter the house and Grace to have any communication with him. My grandfather would have liked to banish Charles from the neighbourhood, but the vicar stood out against him and was not going to turn his nephew away to please him, and they were on bad terms because of this.

Aunt Grace murmured, "Charles!"

"Your niece has had an accident," he said.

I was sure Francine was enjoying the drama even though she was in some pain. Charles said he would carry her to her bed and then go off and ask the doctor to call.

White-faced Aunt Grace, delighted and yet fearfully apprehensive, stammered, "Oh yes ... yes please, Charles ... and thank you. I am sure Francine is very grateful."

Charles laid her on the bed and Grace was in a fever of impatience to get him out of the house while at the same time she longed to keep him there.

The doctor came. It was a bad sprain and she would have to keep to her bed for a few days, possibly a week, and we were to apply hot and cold poultices. I had instituted myself as my sister's nurse and Aunt Grace sent Daisy up to help.

The pain subsided considerably within the next few hours; Francine only felt it when she put her weight on her ankle and, as the doctor's orders were that she was not to do this, she hopped everywhere with my help or that of Daisy. She was soon feeling comfortable and congratulating herself for once again escaping those interminable meals, prayers and the company of the odious Arthur.

There followed the most pleasant week we had known since coming to Greystone Manor. We were in our little oasis, as Francine called it, and Daisy was constantly with us. She entertained us with local gossip and showed us how to tighten our dresses so that we showed our figures to advantage.

"Not that you've got one yet, Miss Pip," she said. She called me Miss Pip, which amused Francine and me. "But you will," she added. "As for you, Miss France—" (she had a habit of shortening names) "—well, you've got a figure in a thousand, you have. Curves in the right places, shaped like an hourglass, and no spare flesh to speak of. It's a sin to put you in that blue serge. I once saw some of the grand ladies up at Granter's. Their dresses was all sparkling. It was a ball or something and they was all out of doors... . You could hear the music. I was rather friendly with one of the footmen there. Hans ... or something like that. Funny name for a man, but he was Hans all right. Hands everywhere they shouldn't have been if you ask me—but I shouldn't be talking like this in front of Miss Pip."

"My sister is well aware of your meaning," said Francine, and we were all laughing together.

"Well," went on Daisy, "this Hans got very friendly with me. He used to take me into the kitchens and show me round. Used to give me things to take home. It was before I got a place up at Greystone. We was hoping I'd get a place at Granter's and I would have done if they'd stayed. Let me comb your hair for you, Miss France. I've always wanted to get my hands on that hair. It's what I call real pretty hair."

Francine laughed good-humouredly and let Daisy dress her hair for her. It was amazing what she did with it.

"I've got a real gift. One of these days I'll be a lady's maid, you see. Perhaps when you get married, eh, Miss France?"

The talk of Francine's marrying set a gloom over us.

"Oh, it's that Mr. Arthur, is it?" said Daisy. "He looks a cold fish, but you never know with men. Not your sort at all ... no more than he would be mine. Not that he'd look at me—well, not with a view to marrying. Some of them has notions though ... a quick bit of fun and no more said and the next day looking at you as though he can't remember who you are. I know that sort. But Mr. Arthur is not one of them."

Aunt Grace came up to see us. She had changed and Charles Daventry's coming to the house had had its effect on her. There was an alert look in her eyes. Was it a hopeful look?

Francine said she was proud to have been the means of bringing them to each other's notice again.

"Now," she said, "we will watch for results."

How we revelled in those days of freedom I To be in this ancient house was exciting, as it was to feel its mystery and lure, to laugh, to forget the menace of the future. What pleasure that was! And we lived in the present—Francine and myself—and I fancy Daisy did all the time.

Aunt Grace was the first one to break the spell. She paid daily visits at precisely the same time every afternoon and brought messages from Cousin Arthur. Daisy said he would consider it improper to enter a girl's bedroom unless he were married to her. That sobered us a little. Talk of marriage in the same context as Cousin Arthur always did.

There was a softness about Aunt Grace. I wondered whether she had visited Charles Daventry and came to the conclusion that she had. She looked at Francine with great sympathy in her doe's eyes. "Your grandfather is pleased to hear that you are progressing well. He always asks how you are."

"I am grateful," said Francine with a touch of irony. "It's very gracious of him."

Aunt Grace hesitated. "He will have something to say to you when you come down."

She was looking speculatively at Francine and my heart sank. I knew what our grandfather would have to say. After all, Francine's seventeenth birthday was not far away. Seventeen was a mature age ... mature enough for marriage.

What should we do?

Aunt Grace's efforts to make the prospect sound pleasant failed miserably. She knew what it meant to suffer from our grandfather's efforts to rule our lives.

"I won't do it," said Francine emphatically when Aunt Grace had gone. "Nothing would induce me. Now we had better start thinking of a way out."

The subject lay heavily upon us when next day Daisy came in to us in a twitter of excitement.

"I was leaning over the fence down at the cottage with Jenny Brakes when I saw them arriving... ."

Jenny Brakes occupied the cottage next to the Emmses'; the other cottages were occupied by gardeners who worked at the Manor.

"You can imagine I was all ears and eyes. They'd all come from the station ... just like they did before. I called out to Ma and out she came and we stood there ... watching. They all went into Granter's. Some of the servants, they was ... and there'll be more coming now. It's all set for the transformation scene, that's what it is. We're in for a bit of fun. High jinks up at the Grange."

We forgot what our grandfather was going to suggest to Francine when she appeared downstairs. We talked excitedly with Daisy and she told us what had happened on other occasions when the exotic inhabitants returned to Granter's Grange.