Master of Hearts by Averil Ives

When blue-eyed Kathleen O'Farrel became governess to the two small nephews of the Conde de Chaves it was all fixed up in such a hurry that she had very little time to reflect on what she was doing. The handsome Conde had strict ideas on how young women should behave, and although Kathleen's fearless approach to most things intrigued him there was a consequent clash of wills. But Portugal cast its spell on Kathleen. She was to know a good deal of heartbreak and to change her ideas about many things before final happiness was hers.

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OTHER Harlequin Romances by AVERIL IVES

1683—DESIRE FOR THE STAR (Original Harlequin title "Doctor's Desire")

872—HAVEN OF THE HEART 1984—ISLAND IN THE DAWN I 1047—MASTER OF HEARTS

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First published in 1959

© Ward, Lock & Co. Limited 1959

Harlequin edition published September, 1966

All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the Author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the Author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

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CHAPTER ONE

KATHLEEN emptied her drawers and folded away nylon underthings in the suit-case that lay open on the bed with the thought at the back of her mind that it was a sad thing doing anything at all for the last time.

And the conclusion of a holiday is sad enough in any case.

Only a fortnight ago she had been happily emptying the suit-case and thinking what an enchanting little bedroom it was she was going to occupy for fourteen glorious days. Glorious, sun-filled days that had lived up to every one of her expectations, because this was sunny Portugal, the month was July, and her hosts were her brother and sister-in-law, who were the nicest people in the world. Quite the nicest people in the world she thought, with a sigh, as she took a last look into the wardrobe to make certain it was bereft of all her light summer linens and cottons, and then walked to the window and threw it wide.

What colour and romance and charm was to be found on this brilliant coast. The sky was as blue as a mountain harebell, and the sea lapped murmurously on the white beach. There was a translucent look about the water, as if it was made of glass, and she knew that when you swam in it it was light and buoyant and warm as oiled silk.

The coast was deeply indented, and that made her think of far away Cornwall, where she had spent many happy holidays when she was a child. Her father, like her brother, had been an artist, and they had rented funny little furnished cottages that had clung dizzily to the edge of cliffs, and become towers of strength on wild and stormy nights. Here in Amara she had not had to live through any wild and stormy nights, but the sensation of light and space and carefree living was the same.

She turned her eyes to the flower-filled gardens inland, the jewel-bright fields, and the countless other white and

colour-washed villas that were dotted like birthday-cakes along the curving shore line, and she knew that the one thing Cornwall had lacked had been this glorious colour. It almost hurt the eyes, was like a violent assault upon the eye-balls, and the deep green of the umbrella pines and the rather dusty palms was something of a relief.

Yes; Amara had colour and charm and romance. But if she had come here looking for real romance —hoping for it secretly at the bottom of her heart —she had been disappointed. For the only romance had been in the flaming dawns and the crystal-clear sunsets; the high-prowed fishing-boats putting out to sea, and the charming young varinas who flashed their black eyes at the sturdy young fishermen, and had the grace of ballerinas as a result of balancing huge baskets of fish on their heads.

The door behind her burst inwards, and Peggy, her sister-in-law, came in with a quick tapping of her cork-soled sandals.

"Darling, the most extraordinary thing has happened!" she exclaimed. She looked so excited that Kathleen regarded her with interest; the more so because instead of taking her basket of market-produce through to the kitchen Peggy had just dumped it on the bed. "It's really amazing how things work out sometimes, and I still can't believe that we may after all be able to keep you here!"

"Keep me here?" Kathleen gazed at her for an explanation. "But—but, what do you mean?"

Peggy fumbled in the pockets of her slacks for the soft paper package of cigarettes that usually reposed in one or other of them, and selected and lighted one before satisfying the other's curiosity. The deliberate movements of her slim, tanned fingers Kathleen found almost maddeningly exasperating just then.

"Darling, you did say you would like to stay in Portugal if it was humanly possible, didn't you?"

"Why, yes . . . You know I'd love to stay, but—"

"And you're not really serious about that job that was offered you in the Home Counties? Or was it the West Country? It sounded terribly dull, so I didn't take

much notice when you were telling me all about it . . ." "You mean the one with the backward girl? Coaching her?"

"Something like that. Poor child, I'm sorry for her if she's backward, but what sort of a life would you have shut up with her in a schoolroom? And as soon as she'd picked up a bit and was ready for school you'd be sent packing! Whereas, with the de Chaves children you might be able to settle down for a year or two."

"The de Chaves children?"

"The Conde's nephews. You haven't met him because we don't normally mix in the exalted circles he moves in, and the atmosphere surrounding the people he knows is a little rarefied. We're just part of the English Colony here, and worse than that we're Bohemian . . . Artists, you know! And even in England folk who live by their brush are sometimes looked at a little askance."

She sounded a little breathless, and Kathleen pulled her down on the end of the bed, alongside the suit-case and the shopping basket. The two girls were much of a height and much of a build — slim and lithe and lissom —but Peggy was obviously several years older than her husband's young sister. And Kathleen was as golden-headed as an English daffodil, while Peggy O'Farrel was sleek and dark and soignée.

"Please go on," Kathleen begged. "I know you're rushing to get through it, but can't you leave the English Colony out of it? Don't forget that Daddy painted, and I know the looks you mean! But apart from breathing a rarefield atmosphere are you trying to tell me that the Conde has a job to offer me?"

Peggy nodded in a pleased fashion.

"How bright of you, darling! And you will accept if he really does offer it to you, won't you? At the moment I've let it be known that you're terribly sought-after and rushing back to England to take up an appointment under pressure, but you'd much rather remain in the warmth and sunshine out here. The Conde's two nephews are American—or, rather, their father was American—and his sister being left a widow so suddenly she's absolutely

at her wit's end to know what to do with the children. Full of Americanisms, you know, and shouting Americanese at the tops of their voices . . ."

"Please," Kathleen begged again, "begin at the beginning if you will, Peg!"

"Very well!" Peggy smiled at her, took a long pull at her cigarette—incidentally, American, also—and obeyed. "I met Mrs. Branston-Jones this morning — she's the wife of the manager of the travel-bureau. She had just been talking to Senhora Elvas, who is the sister of the housekeeper at the Quinta Cereus, which is the Oxide's summer residence — or one of his summer residences, because he's an extremely wealthy man and has houses all over the place. Apparently his sister is now staying with him at the quinta because, as I said, she's recently been widowed, and her two small boys are utterly unmanageable and turning the place into a circus. With all Portuguese families there is a tremendous strong family tie, and the Conde wouldn't dream of turning her adrift, or asking her to put herself up at an hotel, or something of the sort. So an appeal has gone forth for someone to take charge of the children . . . Give them a spot of discipline which the Portuguese nursemaid who is looking after them at the moment is obviously quite incapable of giving them. And, naturally, I thought of you!"

"You — you actually said I might suit?" But for the first time Kathleen sounded doubtful.

"I said I was quite sure you would suit, if only you could be persuaded to renounce your wonderful prospects in England!"

Peggy's nut-brown eyes twinkled. "Darling, it's only a matter of dealing out a few spanks occasionally —probably very frequently until you've got the matter in hand! — and being terribly strict for the first few weeks, at least. You know how appallingly spoilt American children usually are, but underneath they're like all other children, and we all know what a way you have with other people's young! It's one reason why I maintain so strongly that you were simply cut out to be married . ."

But Kathleen headed her off by shaking her head at her, although her eyes smiled.

"Having a 'way' with children doesn't mean I can control unmanageable ones! Especially boys!" she pointed out.

"Being the Conde's nephews, and therefore half Portuguese, I'll guarantee they won't be unmanageable for long — he'll see to that!"

"Then why doesn't he start working on them now?"

"Because, my dear, he's a bachelor with many other more interesting things to do," Peggy explained. "And he's also Head of the House of Chaves, and it would be below his dignity. I've no doubt he's suffering acutely at the moment, with youngsters rampaging all over the place, but if he employs you, and you're capable, he'll give you his support, provided you do your stuff! But you'll simply have to do your stuff!"

"Then I don't think I'll even consider doing it," Kathleen said, and reached for her suit-case. "It's sweet of you, Peg to want me to stay, but I think I'd better catch that train. And first of all there's a 'bus to catch . ."

"Shane is going to drive you in." Peggy caught at her arm, and spoke appealingly. "Kathie, I told Mrs. Branston-Jones that she could tell Senhora Elvas to mention you to the Conde. And, worse than that, I've already telephoned the quintal . . . And spoken to the Conde! He's expecting you about eleven o'clock!"

Kathleen looked faintly appalled.

"But I don't even speak a word of Portuguese!"

There was a harsh grinding of brakes and a groaning of tyres that should have been replaced many moons before, and Kathleen saw her brother climbing out of his vintage car in front of the house. He looked bronzed and handsome and lovable, in spite of his little curly golden beard, and she wished she hadn't to leave him. Her heart swelled with sudden love for him, and the forlornness of going away. All those many miles away . . . back to England, and a jobless condition! Because her last position had come to an end just before she left

England, with the departure of her two charges for a distant land with their parents.

Shane lifted up his voice:

"Where are you two girls?"

Kathleen turned to her sister-in-law.

"But, Peg," she said hurriedly, "I don't like the sound of the Conde! From the picture you've painted of him, he's arrogant and impossible."

"Only because he's Portuguese and rich and sought-after."

"That makes him sound worse than ever!"

"And you needn't bother about Portuguese, because they all speak English. The children probably nothing else."

Shane called again.

"I want some coffee! And if Kathie doesn't hurry

and finish that packing of hers we'll miss the train!" Peg took her sister-in-law determinedly by the arm. "Let's go and tell him he can drive you to the quints

instead!" she said.

CHAPTER TWO

AS Kathleen sat waiting in the ante-room she felt as if Peggy had rather thrust her into this.

It was one thing to have a holiday in Portugal, and to spend it in the company of her nearest relatives; but it was quite another to find herself alone in a Portuguese household, faced with the intimidating prospect of being interviewed by an unknown and autocratic Portuguese male. And a Conde at that!

The title had meant little to her before she left England, but she had an idea now that the holder of it could be heir to a marquisate. And looking about her at the dignified elegance of the ante-room, and remembering how her breath had been slightly taken away by the size and magnificence of the quinta when she first saw it, she could well believe that this particular Conde was very much aware of his rank. As no doubt his sister was very much aware of her rank, too, despite the years she had spent with an American husband.

Kathleen found herself wondering idly how she had ever secured for herself an American for a husband, when Portuguese women with even the most modest pretentions to refinement and fortune were kept very securely tied by the heel. If they had a mother they were laced to her apron-strings until an approved marriage provided them with their first taste of freedom — of a somewhat restricted order. If they had been deprived of a mother at an early age an aunt was called in, usually one with a mind above coercion, and the same programme was adhered to.

Kathleen thought she heard a faint noise in the room adjoining, and she put back her head to listen. Surely that couldn't possibly be muffled laughter in such a silent house? The very thickness of the carpets seemed to, absorb all sound, and the heavy satin draperies cascading over the floor gathered up what delicate echo there might have been left after the almost sensuous pile had attempted to smother it.

Kathleen stared at a portrait and felt sure it was a Velazequez; and she thought how rich and ornate was the gilding of the ceiling. Slender pillars divided the room into two halves, and were entwined with gilded leaves and bunches of grapes, and the damask-covered chairs and couches had fragile little gilt legs. Tall vases held sprays of brilliant blossom, and the colouring was extra vivid against the muted sage-green of the background. Outside, in the middle of a tiny square of emerald lawn, hemmed in by high hedges, a fountain played, and the sound of it came clearly through the open window, and then became lost in the general silence of the room.

Kathleen started to glance at her watch, and she realised it was long past eleven. Yet the Conde had stated eleven o'clock, and Peggy had been terrified lest she should be late. She had barely been given time to change out of her travelling-suit and into one of her pastel-tinted linens that made her look as delicate as a mezzotint with her aura of soft gold hair and her apple-blossom skin Her eyes were an unclouded blue, and her mouth had all the inviting freshness of youth about it.

She looked very young, and she was young; but she also had a certain poise as she sat there, patiently waiting, in the chair a most obsequious servant had pulled out for her. And it wasn't until the slight sound in the next room became unmistakably laughter — repressed, gurgles of laughter — that her curiosity got the better of her, and she stole across the room and opened the door a few inches.

She found herself looking into a library, or a study, even more opulent than the room in which she had waited so long. It had a tremendous desk, with a glittering array of pens and inkwells and so forth; and seated behind the desk was a small boy whose chin barely reached to the blotter on to which he was busily shaking ink from a handsome gold-mounted fountain-pen, while another, who was startingly like him, sat cross-legged on the desk itself and chuckled over the destruction of a letter

with which he was strewing the room as if it was confetti he was manufacturing.

Both boys looked up at her as she stood gazing in at them, and they each leapt guiltily — a condition of mind, Kathleen realised, they had every right to be in —and sprang for cover as she took a step forward. In the case of the boy with the fountain-pen it was under the desk, which he reached in one sinuous, boneless movement; but his companion on this destructive adventure made such an unwary movement that he fell on his head on the carpet, and Kathleen picked him up and even hugged him to her as he started to whimper.

"There, there!" she said. "You haven't really hurt yourself, you know! You're still all in one piece!"

He had the reddest hair she had ever seen in her life; flaming hair that would undoubtedly earn him the cognomen of 'Carrots' when he was old enough to go to school. And his eyes were the greenish-hazel colour that almost invariably go with such hair, and just now they were swimming with surprised tears. It would be several years before he was old enough to go to a preparatory-school, although he was about ripe for a kindergarten, and Kathleen didn't hold it against him that he allowed an unmanly sob or two to escape him. Then he rubbed his eyes as if he was annoyed at his own weakness and scrambled off her lap.

"Who are you?" he demanded aggressively, with a marked American accent.

"I don't need to be told who you are," she replied, deferring the business of introducing herself until later. And if she wasn't engaged to look after them there would be no need to introduce herself. "But, what are you doing here?" she demanded. She looked with sudden horror at the fragments of torn letter and the ink-spots on the otherwise unblemished blotter, and as the second redhead crawled out from underneath the desk and she decided that they were twins she challenged him, too. "What are you doing here? Isn't this out of bounds for you? It looks like your uncle's study!"

"It is," the second red-head admitted, and treated her to a wide, engaging grin that showed a gap in the middle of his top teeth. He added a trifle nasally, and also a little huskily, as if he had a permanent frog in his throat: "But we watched him go out in his big black car, and we knew he wouldn't be back for some time because he said to Filippo before he went that the lady would have to be asked to wait. Are you the lady?" he wanted to know, with sudden interest.

"I—" Kathleen bit her lip. So that was it! The Conde had been called away, and his servant had forgotten to inform her that she would be kept waiting. Or perhaps she hadn't clearly understood what the man had said, because at that time her knees had been shaking a little and she had been far from certain that she ought to have come at all. Now she couldn't help feeling thankful she had come, because someone would have to do something about the mess these two had created.

"Never mind unimportant things now," she said; "but let's get down on our knees and pick up these bits, shall we?" With a delighted shriek the two flung themselves down beside her, and it became a scramble to pick up the bits of torn letter. Jerry (or Jeronimo, as she found out later the elder of the twins' name was) became so excited that he fairly rolled on the floor in his enthusiasm, while Joe (named simply and solely after his American father) fought anyone who got in his way when he was after a particular fragment.

The sounds of their laughter and their shrill, eager voices must have reached far beyond the door that admitted to the ante-room, but Kathleen could do nothing to check the hysterical fervour once she had started it, and as soon as all the pieces were collected she tried to calm them down by telling them they would have to change the blotter. At once they fell upon it, and in the tug-of-war that ensued, each twin wishing to be the one who would actually remove the stained blotting-paper and reveal the virgin white beneath, they once more fell upon the floor, and Kathleen got tripped up by their threshing legs and arms and went down, too. Which caused such a

shriek of merriment that every other sound — save that which might have been caused by an explosion — was muffled by it.

Jerry thought this was the best fun he had had for a long time — certainly the best fun any adult had afforded him since his father died. And he wound his thin arms about Kathleen's neck and kept her down on the rich gold carpet beside him, his strength astounding her because at a glance he looked a mere scrap of a boy; while Joe reached frenziedly for the blotter and began blissfully tearing off white strips. And it was while all this was taking place that the door that had been left standing partly open was suddenly thrust wide open, and a man stood observing them in utter silence.

Jerry was the first to realise he was there, and he uttered a gasp of genuine horror. Kathleen took advantage of the sudden relaxation of the small arms about her neck and struggled to her feet, her spun-golden hair ruffled and her cheeks brilliantly flushed, and Joe said simply, in an awe-stricken voice:

"It's Uncle Miguel!"

"Get to your feet, Jeronimo!" a stern, cold voice requested, and Kathleen wondered whether she had ever heard quite such a remote masculine voice before. "And you, too, Joseph!"

Both boys obeyed him with alacrity, but as if they felt the need of some support they reached instinctively for Kathleen's hands.

"I'm afraid I haven't the pleasure of your acquaintance, senhorita." Grey eyes that were a surprise in such an infinitely dark face gazed straight at Kathleen, and she doubted very much whether he would ever look upon her acquaintance as a pleasure. "I must also add that I didn't expect to find anyone at all in here, least of all a young woman who looks as if she might well be English!"

"I am English," Kathleen heard herself admitting in a whisper.

His level dark brows ascended.

"It is not possible that you are the sister of Senhora O'Farrel?"

Kathleen felt as if she ought to bow her head as she made yet another admission.

"I am Kathleen O'Farrel, senhor, and I came here especially to see you!"

"I find that so hard to believe that you must forgive me if I look as if I doubt your word!" His voice was soft, sibilant, and every syllable received a delicate emphasis. And every syllable was as cold as melting ice. He was beautifully dressed in a cream silk suit, and she wished Peggy had warned her that he was shatteringly handsome, for somehow his type of looks affected her rather like a shock. It wasn't so much the darkness, the perfect features, the strange lustre of the thickly-lashed grey eyes; it was the impression of arrogance and domination, the soft-pedalled message of strength and virility that his tall, elegant shape gave out as he stood there framed in the doorway to the ante-room.

A Portuguese aristocrat who was so unmistakably an aristocrat that there couldn't be a circumstance that could camouflage it from the world. And although he probably wasn't much more than thirty the bleakness in his eyes had nothing to do with youth, or anything approaching an ability to understand youth.

Kathleen pushed back the tumbled hair from her brow, and thought with a sudden surge of resentment that although she had been caught out in a situation that seemed sadly against her, it wasn't fair that he should look at her quite like that.

"I can't change my name to oblige you, senhor, and — strange though it may seem! — I did come here to be interviewed by you!" She bit out the words with a frustrated feeling of impotence. "But of course I understand you almost certainly feel an interview is scarcely necessary now!" She attempted to free her fingers from Jerry's and Joe's small, clinging hands, but they wouldn't let her go. "Your nephews," looking down at them, "were under the mistaken impression that your desk

needed tidying" (what else could she say to defend them?), "and I came in here to—to---"

"Assist in the process of tidying? with an insolent suavity in his voice that made her flush more hotly than ever, while his eyes never left her face.

"Yes, I—I mean, I realised they were being overenthusiastic, and I—"

"You need say no more, senhorita." He seemed to be standing aside in the doorway, to make it possible for her to leave them altogether if she wished—and had the sense! "I can only agree with you that an interview does seem a little unnecessary under the circumstances, and thank-you for having waited so long! Your sister's desire to be of assistance to me is much appreciated by me, but my nephews are already in the charge of a young woman who seems every bit as capable of handling them as you — from the brief opportunity I was afforded of studying you all together! — have given evidence of doing. And I can only repeat that it would be a waste of time to go into the matter further!"

"Thank-you, senhor, I understand perfectly!" But as she wrenched free her hands and walked past him the colour in her face was burning so painfully that her cheeks felt actually as if they were on fire.

He bowed his head.

"I am concerned that you have had to waste so much of your time It is a pity because my nephews are beyond the discipline of any ordinary young woman, as I now realise."

"What nonsense!" she exclaimed, turning on him. Her blue eyes blazed her contempt at him. "They are perfectly normal children who must feel half smothered by the atmosphere in this house! Children require to run free, and above all to be understood. Particularly when they've just lost a parent! And I've no doubt your Portuguese nursemaid is as little capable of understanding how they feel, uprooted as they have been, as you yourself apparently are!"

She bit her lip until the blood spurted, and she felt herself trembling with the indignation that had taken

possession of her. The Conde's eyes grew colder and infinitely more remote, but the iciness of his displeasure had little effect on her.

"My recommendation to you is that you send them to school.. . Anywhere out of this house! And if they've got any relatives in America why not send them back there, if their mother can't bestir herself and look after them herself? In England a young widow would feel grateful for the compensation of two little sons."

Then horror rushed over her as she realised what she had said, and Jerry rushed after her and caught her by the arm.

"Was it you who were going to look after us? Was it really you? Oh, but Uncle Miguel mustn't let you go!" His bottom lip started to tremble, and he looked appealingly at his uncle. "You won't let her go, will you?"

"Silence!" his uncle thundered, and any ordinary boy would have been petrified by the cold ferocity of that order.

But Jerry merely rubbed his eyes and explained: "We didn't know it was her!"

"You didn't know it was me," Kathleen said gently, ruffling his hair. "Something ought to be done about your grammar, but I'm afraid there isn't time now."

"You don't mean you really are going?" Joe asked, sidling up and capturing her other arm. He, too, looked perturbed. "It would be fun if you could make Uncle Miguel let you stay! I didn't mean to kick you when you were under the table just now, but I'd have kicked harder if it had been Rosa. She's fat and dull, and I don't like her!"

"It isn't fair to kick people just because you don't like them," Kathleen murmured to him, and then once more freed herself from clinging hands and moved purposefully towards the door.

She knew that two pairs of greenish-hazel eyes followed her regretfully, but in the Conde de Chaves eyes there was no relenting as he stepped forward to hold open the door for her. Unfailingly polite, he bowed his sleek dark head once more as he said:

"It was good of you to come, senhorita." But she was certain he merely despised her for her stupidity in imagining for one single instant that she was good enough to take entire charge of the nephews of a Portuguese nobleman. Rosa might be fat and dull, but at least she was Portuguese, and she would never have had the effrontery to criticise his sister, and certainly not himself! The additionally bleak look in his eyes was undoubtedly there because she had been so unwise as to let her tongue run away with her. "I understand you are returning to England," staring at her neatly-shod feet, as if they pleased him more than anything else about her. "I wish you a good journey," with the utmost formality.

"Thank-you, senhor. It is almost certain to be a perfectly smooth journey," she returned, with an arctic quality about her clear English voice that was certainly a match for his own.

And then she turned to say good-bye to the boys, and a wave of concern for them rushed over her. They looked so small and unwanted standing there in the doorway to the magnificent library, and once she had left them alone with their uncle there would be no one to put in a good word for them.

"Please, senhor," she begged suddenly, her voice all soft, womanly pleading, one slim, tanned hand with lightly polished nails actually extended a little towards him, "you won't be too harsh on them, will you? For tearing up your letter, I mean, and — and being a bit of a nuisance! After all, they are young!"

His thick eyelashes lifted, and for an instant she thought she saw a look of surprise in the eyes themselves. And then they actually glimmered with something . . . Surely it couldn't be a flickering of humour? It might have been her imagination, but his handsome mouth appeared to twitch slightly at one corner before he straightened his well-held shoulders, and said softly:

"I will bear it in mind that you have put in an appeal for them, senhorita! And I will not actually flay them alive!"

Then he was conducting her across the hall, with its baroque staircase and shining marbles, and although he didn't appear to watch her as she ran down the steps and joined her brother in his antiquated car she had the feeling that he did. Possibly from one of the side windows, for it was a manservant who closed the door.

"Well?" Shane asked, smiling at her as he let in his clutch. "How did it go? When do you start?"

"I don't," Kathleen answered ruefully. "I was a dismal failure. It's England, Home and Beauty for me!"

On the verandah of their little white-walled villa, as they sipped their coffee after lunch — the sort of lunch, Kathleen thought regretfully, she wouldn't be enjoying much longer, with fresh fruits and exciting dishes that were always extremely appetizing — Peggy shook her head in a sort of dull amazement, and declared that she simply didn't understand.

"I'd have said you were the perfect answer to the Conde's problem," she mused. "And, dash it all," she added, with a touch of indignation, "I think he might have taken you on after I bothered to telephone!"

"And I delayed my departure to England!" Kathleen reminded her. "You realise, now, that I shan't catch that plane from Lisbon!"

Peggy looked rather pleased than otherwise.

"As to that, I didn't want you to go, and now I think you ought to stay another week. Do try and persuade her, Shane," she added, turning to her husband.

Shane lay back in his chair and looked at his sister rather quizzically.

"It's up to Kathie herself," he murmured. "She may have an ardent admirer awaiting her return in London!"

"If she has, I'm the King of China's daughter!" Peggy exclaimed scoffingly, and then looked at Kathleen reproachfully. "Why do you never do things like other young women of your age?" she demanded. "At twenty-two, and with your looks, you ought to be beset by admirers! But I suppose it's the old story, and you're waiting for some unlikely Mr. Right to come along and sweep

you off your feet? Don't you know that in this day and age, with bags of competition and an acute shortage of males who're even willing to think about matrimony, that's simply asking for a lifetime of spinsterhood!"

Kathleen coloured delicately, as she always did when her sister-in-law got on to this favourite subject of hers, but she managed to infuse humour into her voice as she replied:

"Perhaps I'll enjoy being a spinster all my days. Perhaps I'm even looking forward to it!"

"Rubbish!" Peggy declared. "No woman wants to be a spinster if she can avoid it."

"Then perhaps I really am waiting for Mr. Right to come along. And if I'm as delectable as you're always trying to make me out to be he won't hesitate to grab hold of me when he does appear!"

Peggy looked at her thoughtfully.

"You're delectable all right. You're quite lovely. You and Shane have glorious colouring." She looked at her husband appreciatively, and then back again at her sister-in-law. "And in your case, Kathie, you have the air of a Dresden Shepherdess. Sometimes you don't even look quite real. Perhaps that's one reason why our hearty English males have refrained from stampeding you. You're a thought too fragile for the hard-working man who needs someone to fend for him on occasion."

"It's a deceptive fragility, as you should know by this time," Kathleen said, smiling. "I'm tough enough underneath."

"Plainly the Conde thought you were a little too tough," Peggy remarked regretfully. "It's a pity he found you under the table with his nephews. You probably struck him as a kind of Paddy-the-next-best-thing, and he couldn't see you disciplining those precious twins. However, I'm sure he's wrong."

"So am I," Kathleen agreed, seriously. "I thought they were precocious but lovable."

"They sound quite abominable," Peggy said, laughing. "I'm not at all sure I'd want the charge of them myself."

"I'm very certain I'll never have the charge of them," Kathleen, with the wry note in her voice that had been there when she admitted her failure to her brother, observed with a peculiarly keen regret stirring in her. "The Conde was quite firm."

"A pity," Peggy remarked again. She looked more closely at her sister-in-law. "What did you think of his looks?"

"I was more struck by his arrogance," Kathleen answered, not altogether truthfully. "I thought he was detestable."

"Yet all the unmarried women in the district are dying to marry him, and their mamas lay traps for him. In Lisbon, I believe, it's the same. He's a very much sought-after bachelor, and it isn't only because of his wealth and rank. He's reputed to have a certain charm."

"I can't believe it," Kathleen said, and she said it so firmly that Peggy decided to drop the subject. But she didn't drop her insistence that Kathleen should stay for another week, and in the end, because Shane, too, urged that there was no real reason why she should rush back to England, and so far as he was concerned it would be delightful if she made up her mind to remain with them forever — or, at any rate, until she contracted that marriage Peggy was always hoping for — Kathleen agreed to stay on. Shane brought out a bottle of champagne and they toasted one another on top of their coffee, which was a little odd but very pleasant in the cool shade of the verandah.

And Kathleen had a curious sensation as if she had received a reprieve because she was staying, and the blue sky and the bluer sea and all the rest of the magnificent display of colour would be hers for another seven days. But she repeated to herself when she went to bed that night, and looked out at the stars, and thought of two lonely small boys in the Quinta Cereus — which, as she knew, meant Queen of the Night, or Nightblowing Cereus, a huge water-lily like blossom of waxen beauty — that the Conde de Chaves was probably the most unpleasant man she had ever met in her life.

Unpleasant, and brutal. For there had been something quite ruthless about the way he had despatched her about her business, and ignored the appeals of his nephews.

CHAPTER THREE

IT was surprising how quickly that extra week passed. Kathleen took advantage of every moment of it, and the weather remained perfect. She bathed and sun-bathed, careful not to offend the local inhabitants by wearing her sun-suits on the beach, but doing so in a corner of the O'Farrel varandah.

Portuguese women, she had discovered, were at all times extremely correct. She doubted whether they ever laid aside their formality while there was any danger of a public eye being focused on them. Such things as slacks were never worn by even the youngest amongst them, and black was a popular colour for both day and evening wear.

Peggy and Shane had surrounded themselves with a small coterie of friends, and they had already introduced Kathleen to most of the members of this limited circle. There was no one particularly smart; no one to provide her with a single heart-throb; and certainly no one moved in the exclusive set that was favoured by the inclusion of the Conde de Chaves. No one who appeared to have even a nodding acquaintance with him—apart, that is, from Peggy, who had once been graciously given a lift by him in his car when she was returning from the weekly market with her usual crowded basket of shopping.

"I shall never quite forget the occasion," she said, chuckling over the recollection as she and Kathleen sat enjoying a cup of coffee beneath a sun-umbrella in busy Amara one morning when the latter's week was drawing to a close. "He was driving a long glistening black car that was the most magnificent car I've ever been permitted to sit in, and he himself was faultlessly turned out. I was wearing my usual well-worn slacks, and a cotton blouse, and I even had my head tied up with a bandanna. But as he slowed the car it was quite obvious he didn't mistake me for a peasant, and he even looked

at me as if he had a feeling he ought to know me . socially, I mean! I was immensely flattered!"

"Why?" Kathleen asked, rather crisply, and Peggy looked at her with a smile in her eyes.

"Because he's so staggeringly good-looking, for one thing—and because he is the Conde! We all know about him, we all look upon him like the locals as a kind of Lord of the Manor, and that sort of thing, and we're all secretly impressed by the tales of his wealth. And to me that morning he was charming, just as he's charming to all his numberless tenants when he comes here in the autumn for the wine-harvest."

"Don't tell me he joins in the festivities? I can't imagine him unbending sufficiently for that!"

"He doesn't forget his dignity, but he does join in. He's immensely popular with the poorer people, and is a first-class landlord. There are no neglected houses on his estates, and he's reputed to be very generous."

"It's easy to be generous when you're rich and it doesn't hurt your pocket," Kathleen pointed out, stubbing the end of her cigarette in the ash-tray with a kind of unnecessary vigour.

Peggy's eyes twinkled at her over the tip of her own cigarette.

"You're determined to hold it against him, aren't you, because he didn't let you have that job? But, on the whole, I think it's a good thing you didn't get it! You're inclined to behave occasionally as if you were a law unto yourself, and that sort of thing doesn't go down well in a strictly Portuguese household. The female must always defer to the male over here, and you're not good at that—it's probably the Irish in you! I think an English employer is safest for you."

"I imagine that if I had been taken on to look after the boys I'd have been employed by their mother," Kathleen stated.

"Nothing of the kind, darling," Peggy assured her blithely. "Rumour has it that Dona Inez has been left very badly off—in fact, her husband doesn't seem to have had any money at all! And therefore the whip is in the

hands of your enemy, and I've no doubt he'll crack it to the good of his nephews—as he sees it!"

"Poor little Jerry and Joe!" Kathleen said, so feelingly that once again Peggy decided it might be advisable to drop the subject of the Conde de Chaves.

"Oh, I don't know," she murmured, and let it go at that. And then, with sudden briskness: "But we mustn't forget that to-morrow really is your last day, and we must do something to make it memorable! What shall we do? Go for a whole day to Lisbon, or have a picnic somewhere? It's up to you, darling! Shane will fall in with anything that doesn't involve dressing up—he and the Conde would never see eye to eye!" Peggy sighed suddenly. "I must admit I like dressing up myself sometimes."

Kathleen took the basket from her as they started to walk home, the brilliant sea on one side of them; and then she slipped her free hand inside her sister-in-law's arm and asked with a trace of concern:

"But you're happy here? You like the life?"

"Oh, darling, it's a heavenly life?" Peggy looked out to sea, and her velvet-brown eyes grew dreamy. "A bit gypsyish, but perfect! Wonderful summers and short winters; ideal conditions for Shane to paint under! And the people are all so nice and friendly, and homely."

"All except the Conde!" Kathleen heard herself remark.

Peggy took her arm and squeezed it.

"Forget him," she advised. "Forty-eight hours from now and he'll have passed right out of your life!"

But so unexpected is Life, and so strange at times—following an unnecessarily intricate pattern, or so it often seems—that twenty-four hours from that walk home along the colourful sea front Kathleen was installed in the Quinta Cereus, and unpacking her things in a delightful room that was all English chintz and period Portuguese furniture.

It had all come about in such an unexpected fashion that she felt she wanted to pinch herself to make certain she wasn't dreaming.

On their return home they had had lunch and discussed plans for the following day, and it had been decided that a whole day in Lisbon would be ideal. Shane said he would spread himself and take them to lunch at rather a fabulous restaurant where the food was unforgettable, and Kathleen had chosen one of her prettiest frocks to wear for the occasion. But instead she wore the frock when a car from the quinta—long, and glittering, and black like all the Conde's cars—bore her in state to the home of the man to whom she had taken a violent dislike.

The fat Rosa had been summoned to the bedside of a stricken parent, and the household at the quinta had been thrown into a state of uproar because no one seemed capable of taking charge of the twins. To make matters worse, their mother had succumbed to some indisposition that prostrated her, and therefore there was no hope that she would make herself responsible for the good conduct of her offspring. In a state verging on desperation (and it must have been sheer desperation, Kathleen thought, to allow him to once more turn his thoughts towards her) the Conde had remembered the English girl who had so failed to impress him, but whom rumour had it was still in Amara, and had sent a politely couched appeal to her to step in and fill the breach. She was under no obligation to accept if she didn't wish to — and apparently once Rosa returned she would be sent packing again! — but it would be of inestimable assistance, and greatly appreciated, if she would rise to the occasion in spite of her earlier rejection.

Peggy was so much taken aback by this imperious request, for in spite of the politeness of the plea it was imperious, that she was inclined to advise her sister-in-law to have nothing to do with it, particularly as it was only a temporary gap she was to fill. And Shane wasn't too pleased, either, that his one and only sister was about to be made use of — if, that is, she consented to take the job! But Kathleen, to the mild astonishment of

them both, didn't seem to think she had any option but to accept.

"I'm thinking of Jerry and Joe," she explained. "With no Rosa and a mother out of action they might even be sent away somewhere if the Conde can't hand them over to someone! And although I was all for them being sent away to school I didn't mean immediately! They're such helpless scraps — and you've no idea how ridiculously undersized they are! — for that to happen to them yet!"

"Well, darling, whatever their size I don't really think they're your concern," Peggy said diffidently, but Kathleen was quite firm.

"It doesn't matter how long the job lasts. I'll take it until I'm thrown out — and if my methods are unconventional I'll probably be thrown out very quickly! —but I won't turn my back on poor Jeronimo and Joseph at this juncture!"

And within a short space of time that was actually less than a quarter of an hour, she was travelling in superb comfort to the quinta, separated from a dignified, impeccably uniformed chauffeur by a glass partition that provided her with a sensation of splendid segregation.

The Conde's cars must have been specially built for him; they disdained every imperfection in the surface of the road, so that she might have been travelling on a mechanised air-cushion. And the sleek door panels bore a crest which was repeated, she was to discover, on everything that was owned personally by Miguel de Chaves.

He was waiting for her in the hall when she ascended the tall flight of steps to the front door, which was standing open. She could see him posed against the sumptuous background she remembered very vividly, although she had had only one previous glimpse of it.

Today the Conde was wearing a pearl-grey suit, and the thing that struck her most about him was the stark whiteness of his linen. Possibly it was the darkness of his skin that threw it into prominence, but whatever it was she was certain that his laundry bills would have been colossal if he had been a man with no servants.

He stepped forward at once to greet her, and she wondered whether, if she had been someone of importance, he would have met her at the foot of the flight of steps.

"It was good of you to come, Miss O'Farrel," he said, and his English was correct and effortless. She noticed particularly that he refrained from addressing her as senhorita, and wondered whether it was because she had come and he wished to make her feel as much at home as possible.

"I was on the point of leaving for home," she admitted. "But as you wanted someone badly, naturally I came."

They looked at each other. His eyes were darker than she remembered — perhaps not so much grey as a kind of grey-black, rather like the sea when storm clouds mass above it. Hers were utterly serene, betraying not the slightest tendency to drop before his, and wonderfully, deeply blue. Her eyelashes had a powdering of gold at the tips, and her hair was a lovely golden cloud reaching almost to her shoulders. The dress she had selected for the trip to Lisbon had tiny blue flowers scattered all over a white muslin ground, and she could hardly have looked less like a governess if she had tried.

"It was good of you to come so promptly," was all he said then, and she realised that he intended no apology for having seized upon her like a lifeline after unhesitatingly dismissing her only the week before because he was quite certain she couldn't be of the slightest use to him.

Her lips curved a little wryly as he stood aside to permit her to ascend the staircase in the wake of the servant who was carrying her luggage, and although she was certain his eyes followed her part way up the stairs, when she turned to look back over the balustrade he had vanished from the hall.

Plainly he was a man who believed in wasting little time on a mere employee, even if he had once given her sister-in-law a lift and behaved towards her as if her social status was not altogether beneath him!

But the slightly uncomfortable, flat feeling that had assailed Kathleen disappeared as soon as the door of her room was flung open, and she saw how delightful it was. Obviously got ready for her in a hurry, because there was a little pile of English magazines on a low table near one of the wide windows and a delicate toy of a Sheraton writing-desk had been placed between the windows, and looked a little out of keeping with the rest of the furniture, it was nevertheless a most attracive room. And that in spite of the fact that the bulk of the furniture was heavy and typically Portuguese, with ornate carving and a slight air of solemnity.

Kathleen examined the spirals of the four-poster bed, that reached almost to the ceiling, and decided that the contents of her suit-cases would be lost in the wardrobe space that was at her disposal. But the chintz of the chair-covers, with its pale yellow flowers against a lavender ground, pleased her. It looked as if it was carefully preserved, and at some time or other some member of the de Chaves family must have brought it from England.

There were yellow roses in a bowl, and yellow towels in the bathroom adjoining, that she discovered was to be her own. And throughout the paintwork was an agreeable shade of pale turquoise.

It was about seven o'clock when she arrived; by eight o'clock she had met no one apart from the Conde for those few minutes on arrival, and the maid who had offered to unpack for her. But this she preferred to do herself, and she was thinking how extraordinarily silent was the quinta and how little her presence there seemed to be needed, when the maid returned with a tray on which was her evening meal.

It was a beautifully arranged tray, and there was everything on it that she needed to satisfy her appetite —which was slight, however, because she felt so strange —and set down on the little table in the window it was very pleasant toying with the food in the last of the daylight. But very soon the half-light became starlight, and the big room seemed queer, silvery and empty, yet

somehow she couldn't bring herself to move and switch on the lights. Besides, there were some delicious flower scents coming in through the open window, and there was an odd fascination about watching the intricate effect of moonlight on the quiet garden without, and the checkerboard of light and shadow — infinitely black shadow — it made on the paths. There were high hedges and strangely shaped bushes and shrubs, and the palely glimmering trumpets of the Queen of the Night flowers were almost too exquisite to be real.

When the maid came for the tray she seemed surprised to find her sitting in the darkness, and wanted to put on the lights. But Kathleen stopped her. She summoned enough Portuguese to ask:

"Where are the little boys? Are they asleep?"

The maid seemed disconcerted by the question, and merely echoed. "They sleep!" before she fled from the room.

Kathleen sighed, and wondered whether it would be safe for her to go to bed. The Conde was no doubt dining out, and possibly his sister was dining out with him. Or was she still in a state of collapse? But how strange that no one had felt the slightest desire to see her and give her a few instructions. And who had put the children to bed? Who had temporarily taken on Rosa's duties?

The question was answered when a small pyjama-clad wraith came tip-toeing to her door, and who after he had put his head in a few inches to make certain she was there held a finger to his lips and took a flying leap across the room until he landed in her lap.

"You've come, you've come!" he exclaimed joyfully, in an exaggeratedly hoarse whisper. "Joe said they wouldn't let you, but they have! We played up old Rosa so that she had to go, and then Mama had one of her `turns'—heads, you know! She just lies in a darkened room, and stays there, and that meant there was no one to look after us at all, excepting old Maria, who put us to bed tonight. But Joe said he heard your voice on the stairs, and I stayed awake until there was no one about, and came to look for you!"

He was shivering with delight and satisfaction because he had found her at last, and he buried his head against her chest. Kathleen was so moved by his undisguised pleasure that at first she could say nothing, not even reprove him for having deserted his bed, and the feel of his small body snuggling up to her was comforting. Then she managed to say:

"But, your uncle! What would he say if he knew you were here?"

"Uncle Miguel's gone out. He goes out nearly every evening, 'cept when there's a party!"

"And how do you know he won't come home early and bring someone with him?"

"If he did he wouldn't bother about me—or Joe!" "But he might bother about me! He might want to make sure I was still here!"

"You won't go away again, will you?" Jerry wasn't interested in the remote possibility of his uncle returning and finding him where he was, but he did want to make certain his schemes—or, rather, his and Joe's—were about to receive their just reward. "You're going to stay with us now, aren't you? For a long, long time!"

"I'll stay if I'm permitted until Rosa returns."

He chuckled.

"Rosa won't return, because we frightened her. We used to jump out on her when she didn't even know we were anywhere near, and she's so fat that she quivers like jelly when she's startled! We put things in her bed—crawly things!—and hid in her cupboard amongst her clothes! She said that we spoiled her best black dress."

Kathleen smiled in the darkness, but she couldn't help feeling a certain sympathy for Rosa.

"So that was why her mother was taken ill, and she had to go home and nurse her?"

"Yes." Jerry chortled as if Rosa's unnecessary journey had afforded him much secret amusement. "So, you see, she won't come back!"

"It would be a fitting punishment for you and Joe," Kathleen told him, trying to sound severe, "if she

screwed up her courage and did come back! After all, this was probably a very well-paid post!"

"What is a well-paid post?" Jerry wanted to know, but his voice was suddenly sleepy, and he nestled against her as if he was fully prepared to remain where he was for the rest of the night. "Do you think I could go to sleep here?" he enquired. "It's very comfortable, and I like the smell of you. My Mama smells nice," stifling a yawn, "but Rosa smells of garlic!"

All at once Kathleen realised what a foolish thing she was doing by allowing Jerry to be there. She must hustle him back to his room straight away. It only needed her to be caught out yet again in irresponsible conduct of this sort for the doors of the quinta to be thrown wide to her, however badly someone was needed to look after the twins.

"No, of course you can't stay here," she said quickly. "You must be a good boy like Joe, and go back to bed at once!"

She attempted to urge him off her lap, but he clung like a limpet and it was more than she could manage to dislodge him. She had already experienced the strength of his wiry arms and hands, and now all at once she felt alarmed.

"Jerry," she pleaded, "I'll carry you back to bed! Just tell me how I can find your room. . ."

"Not until you've told me a story," with sleepy obstinacy. "One of those stories my Daddy used to tell me . . . about dragons and things!"

The darkness was wrapping them about, and the whole house was as still as a pool. She thought with a sensation of helplessness, while sudden weariness dragged at her own limbs and a sort of mental inertia clamped down on her, that the only thing she could do was tell him a story that would send him quickly to sleep, and then carry him back to his room. Somehow or other she would have to find it without help or direction.

She began on the story of Beauty and the Beast, and no sooner was it finished than he insisted on

another. He sounded drowsy, but as inflexible as ever,

and she retailed the adventures of Simon the Pieman.

"Want dragons," he insisted, as autocratic as his uncle, and wearily she told him about St. George and the Dragon. But apparently he was well versed in details she knew nothing about, and his constant interjection threw her out altogether. It had been a somewhat unusual day, with an emotional strain about it because she had been expecting to say good-bye to her closest relatives within a matter of hours, and then on top of it there had come the demand for her assistance. For several hours she had sat in a cramped position alone in a silent room, and now she was fighting drowsiness herself, and her brain began to feel as if it was made of cotton wool.

Jerry mumbled something indistinctly, and she thought how warm and cuddlesome he was in spite of his sharp little bones. His head was stirring gently with the rise and fall of her slim breasts, and one of his hands was tucked confidingly inside one of her own. Without quite realising what she was doing she drew him closer, rested her cheek against his unmanageable red hair and closed her eyes.

The warm breeze from the window stirred her hair, and the cushions against which she allowed her tired body to relax were very soft and yielding. She opened her eyes and made an effort to insist that that was all for tonight about dragons, but Jerry was asleep, a sudden leaden weight in her arms, and try as she would she couldn't stop her eyelids closing.

When finally a bright light dazzled her, and she opened them dazedly, she couldn't for the life of her think where she was. A tall man was standing looking down at her, wearing a white dinner jacket. There was a crimson flower in his lapel, and a crimson silk handkerchief was tucked negligently just inside one of his immaculate sleeves. He was extremely dark, and his eyes confused her.

With a stunning sensation of shock she realised the crime she had been guilty of.

"I'm sorry. . . . I'm so terribly sorry, I fell asleep!" he stammered.

The Conde de Chaves bent over her.

"You'd better let me take him," he said, in an expressionless voice, and removed Jerry's dead weight from her lap.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE following morning Kathleen breakfasted alone in the window of her pleasant room, and then the maid who seemed to have been deputed to wait on her requested her to follow her. Kathleen both looked and felt extremely uneasy, and a little bewildered. The maid had no idea why uneasiness pressed upon her as if it was something that could be experienced physically as well as mentally, and she led the way along numerous thickly-carpeted corridors until at last they arrived at a series of airy, pastel-tinted nurseries.

Nothing more—nothing more capable of consolidating alarm. Just a big Day Nursery, and an even bigger Night Nursery, with bathrooms and a kitchen for the preparation of childish meals. And in the Day Nursery Jeronimo and Joseph were busily waving cereal spoons, while 'Old Maria,' as they called her, selected a couple of deliciously ripe nectarines from the dish of fruit on the table and prepared one for each of them.

Joseph thrust aside his cereal bowl at sight of Kathleen, and let loose a whoop of delight. Jeronimo smiled at her conspiratorially, as if he understood that they shared a secret and that at all costs it must remain so.

But Kathleen thought wryly that the repercussions would catch up with her before very long. This was just a respite—this glimpse of the children's quarters; and while she waited for the second summons that would sever her brief connection with the quinta she went round helping Maria put away books and toys that had been scattered about carelessly the day before, and between them they restored something like order to a room that had recently been redecorated and furnished at considerable cost.

There were delightful water-colours on the walls, birds and flowers executed with exquisite precision on the door panels, and huge glistening cupboards for the

reception of the twins' possessions. And it said something for the generosity of their uncle that they seemed to have numerous possessions as costly as everything else that surrounded them.

Maria really was old, and she had difficulty in bending her rheumaticky limbs to pick up woolly dogs and stray railway engines from under inconvenient side tables, and the children shrieked with delight every time her joints creaked protestingly and she uttered a little agonised grunt. Kathleen smiled with something of an effort because they were in such high spirits, but she had already recognised that they were a slightly inhuman pair who might require the sternest dealing with in time. She herself was not likely to have to deal with them at all after the night before, but because they had taken a tremendous fancy to her they were moderately amendable to her wishes, and when she told them to stop laughing at Maria they stopped.

Maria shook her fist at them.

"They are the Devil's children," she said, and shook her head at Kathleen. "I wish you joy of them, senhorita!"

Kathleen was convinced that the joy would be short-lived. Last night the Conde—possibly because she had been utterly unable to defend herself, awakened from sleep as she had been—had said little to condemn her for encouraging his nephew to leave his bed at night, but his very silence had spoken volumes to Kathleen. That, and the way he had taken Jerry from her.

She had stumbled to her feet, and tried to rub the sleep out of her eyes. The glow of light in the room still confused her.

"I am so sorry, senhor! . . ." But her apologies were a trifle inarticulate. "I can't think how it happened. . . ."

"Perhaps if you would be so good as to lead the way," he returned quietly, "we can restore him to his bed without it becoming necessary to wake him."

"Of course, senhor!" Somehow she got the door open, and stood aside for him in the corridor. "But as I don't knew the way won't you, please, go ahead?"

"You don't know the way?" His eyebrows ascended. "You have not yet made acquaintance with the nurseries?"

"No, senhor."

"But, how does it come about that this child . . .?" His black eyebrows knitted for a moment as he looked down at his sleeping nephew, and then he gazed expressionlessly at Kathleen. "No matter. Explanations can wait. Follow me and hold open the door when I request you, and I still think this amazing infant can be placed in his bed undisturbed."

Kathleen obeyed him, and it seemed to her that they passed along endless miles of softly-lit corridor before they finally reached a distant wing of the house where the Night Nursery door was standing open, and Joe was slumbering like an angel in his own little pastel-blue bed.

The lighting was so dim that it was scarcely lighting at all, but it was sufficient to prevent the boys from experiencing alarm if they wakened in nightmarish agitation. Jerry was slid expertly into his bed by his uncle, and Kathleen just as expertly arranged the covers over him, so that he never once stirred. And then the two adults stood for a moment looking down on the small freckled face that was so peaceful and angelic in sleep—possibly more so than that of Joe, who had nothing at all on his conscience—and finally stepped back into the sable shadows beyond the reach of the night-light.

The Conde didn't speak, as he moved to the door, and Kathleen followed him. Outside it she realised that he was looking down at her.

"The child came to look for you?"

"Yes." She made a little gesture with her hands. "But, it was only because—because he thought he heard my voice! Or Joe thought he heard it. . . . And then he wanted me to tell him a story."

"And you both fell asleep."

"Yes."

It was such a dreadful confession that she could hardly get the word out.

Miguel de Chaves' face remained absolutely expressionless, but he placed the tips of two fingers under her elbow and guided her back along the corridors. Outside her room she turned to him, wishing her brain felt more alert and more capable of framing sentences that would put her contrition into words, but he gave her no opportunity to say anything, and merely asked rather curtly:

"Filippo looked after you well when you went down to dinner?"

"I didn't go down to dinner, senhor. I had a tray sent up to my room."

"You—what?" There was no doubt about the frown that creased his brows this time.

"I had a meal on a tray in my room. It was all, and more, than I wanted."

"But that was entirely opposed to my instructions!" She sensed trouble for somebody—possibly Filippo! —and elaborated swiftly:

"It was a beautiful arranged tray! And I have such a pleasant room that I shall be very happy to have my meals there." She could have added, If you decide against booting me out in the morning!

But the Conde was plainly displeased.

"In this house people do not have meals in their rooms unless an indisposition confines them to them," he told her. "In future you will dine always in the main dining-salon, although your charges are too young to behave properly at table. And now I would advise you to go to bed."

"About tonight, senhor—"

"We will discuss that in the morning," he said brusquely, and turned on his gleaming heel and left her.

And now it was morning, and Kathleen was beginning to feel like a prisoner who was to learn of her

sentence when the judge felt disposed to put her out of her agony.

The children finished their breakfast, and then demanded to be entertained. Jerry had a model aeroplane which he wanted her to assist him to reduce to its component parts, while Joe had a weakness for jig-saw puzzles, and brought out a pile from one of the capacious cupboards. Neither of them were interested in Lessons, and seemed to think it a waste of time to attempt to read any one of the numerous books that were neatly arranged on the white-painted shelves. They were familiar enough with the pictures, and as Joe explained:

"Mama reads to us when her head is all right. Rosa can only read Portuguese."

Jerry celebrated the departure of Rosa by snatching all the Portuguese books off the shelf and scattering them far and wide.

Kathleen recognised that even if she was permitted to stay, her task—if she was to gain any real control over these tumultuous twins—was to be no easy one. And the thought added to her uneasiness as she waited for the second summons of the morning, which when it finally came set her heart beating as if it was carelessly attached to the end of a string that dangled down inside her.

But once again this proved to be an anti-climax, and instead of being conducted downstairs to the library she was taken to a suite of rooms in quite a different part of the quinta. No sooner had she entered them than the almost overpowering feminine luxury came at her like a voluptuous mantle cast over her head, and her first sight of Dona Inez was so much in keeping, and such a surprise, that she could hardly keep her astonishment out of her face.

For some reason she had pictured the twins' mother as a dignified Portuguese matron, borne down with the grief of losing a husband. But Miguel de Chaves' sister looked as if she had only just turned twenty; she was like some lovely, tenuous, waxen blossom as she lay

on a low French bed in the white and gold bedroom. The vitality in her glorious dark eyes had the restless quality of one who was infinitely bored, and the pallor of her complexion would have deceived no one. She possessed the matt white skin of the most favoured amongst her country women, containing the purity of the Night Blowing Cereus, with none of its fragile texture.

She had the slender body of a very young girl—almost a child—and she was clad in a white silken house-gown as she lay on the bed. Her hair was a tangle of curls with some Titian lights caught up in the jetty masses, and although it was very early in the day there were pearls in her ears and a diamond bracelet blazed on her wrist. A fine platinum chain encircled one slender ankle.

She uttered an exclamation when the maid ushered Kathleen into the room, and then sat up and indicated a chair beside the bed.

"Sit down," she said, speaking English with the same effortlessness as her brother, but with a little less of his formality. "I am relieved to find that you really are young, and not one of those stiff-necked English duennas such as I myself had when I was a child." She smiled faintly. "No doubt it was your youth that caused my brother to look with little favour on you in the first place."

Kathleen didn't answer, but she sat down as requested. Dona Inez called the maid back as she was on the point of departing, and ordered her to bring coffee.

"It is the hour for elevenses, as you would say," she said to Kathleen, "and Maria can be safely entrusted with the children for a time. They make fun of her because she is old, but she will keep them amused while we talk."

Kathleen wanted to suggest that it was not a very kind thing to make fun of the old, but she had an idea that the widow would have arched her pencil-slim eyebrows and looked at her with amusement in her

own eyes. There was no false sentiment about Dona Inez de Chaves Curtis!

The coffee arrived, and Dona Inez—who seemed to suffer from a perpetual languour—stretched herself gracefully on her pillows, and asked Kathleen to pour out. She kept her eyes fixed on the girl while she did so, and when her own cup was offered to her indicated with a beautiful white hand that it was to be set down near to her. Then she said:

"You are pretty! In fact, you are very pretty!"

"Thank you." But Kathleen's surprise showed in her face. "I'm sure you are more concerned with my ability to take charge of your little boys."

The Portuguese woman laughed softly.

"On the contrary, I have seen so many young women attempt to take charge of my little boys that I should be infinitely surprised if in a very short while they weren't taking charge of you! It always happens, and you can blame it on my husband, who ruined them." She spoke so carelessly of her husband that Kathleen was conscious of shock. "American men dote on children, and Joe was no exception. You know, I expect, that he died as the result of an accident?"

"I—I didn't know. I'm sorry!"

Dona Inez reached for a cigarette, and lighted it. "It was a car accident. Joe always drove much too fast."

"I'm sorry," Kathleen said again, rather feebly. The other shrugged.

"Life is full of sorrow, and one has to accept it." Her voice, however, held none of the undercurrents of tragedy. "I was not very happy in America, and I'm glad to be home again."

Once again Kathleen said nothing, and Dona Inez regarded her through a feathery plume of smoke as it curled upward to the ceiling. Suddenly her voice sounded definitely amused, and a smile curled her vivid lips.

"My brother clings to the old order of things, and he believes that woman should fit into a niche. When he marries his wife will have to obey him, and she will

never have the freedom that I had as an American wife. Whether or not unlimited freedom is good for a woman I don't know, but you will appreciate that I find it a little difficult to settle back into the old routine. However, before very long I shall perhaps have my own establishment once more."

She flicked ash from her cigarette, delicately, into an ash-tray. And Kathleen waited for something that she felt was coming.

"One reason why I was so relieved to discover that you are young—and distinctly human!—is that I feel very much the odd-man-out in an establishment of this sort, and it will be nice to know that we can have a little talk occasionally, and no doubt become friends." Her eyes were alert as they studied Kathleen's face. "I feel that I need a friend, and most of my old ones have forgotten me. There is, however, one who will be coming here today . . . this morning."

Kathleen still waited.

"You have already come up against the difficult side of my brother. You will understand, therefore, if I ask you to turn a blind eye should you meet this particular friend—and he is a particular friend!—on the stairs? You will not let Miguel know about it?"

Kathleen stood up.

"I'm afraid you don't quite understand that there is a strong possibility that I may not be staying here, Dona Inez. ..."

But the other was not listening to her, she was giving all her attention to a very slight commotion that was going on in the sitting-room on the far side of the door. Her pale cheeks were warmed by the rush of colour that swept into them, and her eyes sparkled with excitement. She fairly leapt off the bed and started to peel off her housegown.

"I must dress," she said, reverting to Portuguese in her excitement. Then, in English: "Go now, Miss O'Farrel," she commanded. "Return and look after the children. I will have a little talk with you another day."

Kathleen accepted her dismissal with a slight feeling of bewilderment, and as she left the bedroom Dona Inez was ripping open the doors of her wardrobe and running her hands over the long line of lovely frocks and expensive suits that hung there. She selected something in a deep peacock-blue colour, with the shimmer of brocade, and flung it on the bed while she made up her face.

Kathleen walked across the floor of the sitting-room without noticing at first that a man was standing before the window, looking out into the sun-filled gardens of the quinta. The maid had just left him alone, and he was gazing thoughtfully into space with a slight smile on his lips.

As Kathleen passed close to him he turned and glanced at her in surprise. One of his eyebrows shot upwards. She had an impression of velvety brown eyes that registered admiration as she lifted her own blue ones, an olive skin and a handsome, if rather weak, mouth. And his teeth were very white as he smiled quickly.

He said something in Portuguese, but she was not familiar enough with the language to know what it was. As she reached the opposite door the one behind her opened, and Inez put in her lovely head.

"I will not keep you, Fernando," she said, with a silken softness. Then, as Kathleen made her hurried escape, "It is only the new governess!"

Kathleen stood outside the door and felt herself frowning. Not because she had been dismissed as `only the new governess,' but because Inez was doing something, she was certain, against the wishes of her brother. And since he was for the moment, at least, supporting her and her two children it didn't seem quite right, somehow.

CHAPTER FIVE

KATHLEEN was still looking perplexed, and faintly

disturbed, when she reached the head of the magnifi-

cent marble staircase on her way back to her own room.

She had the uneasy conviction that she was hopelessly lost, and it was something of a relief to see the Conde himself ascending the stairs.

"Ah, Miss O'Farrel!" he exclaimed, and paused within a few feet of her. "I was on my way to visit my sister, but you and I have a little something to talk about, and as my sister is, I understand, disinclined to receive visitors this morning, we will go down to the library!"

Kathleen said nothing, only gazed at him. She wasn't thinking so much about that 'little something' they had to talk about, as the narrow escape Dona Inez had had from being caught with a handsome masculine caller in her sitting-room—while she changed in the next room!

According to Portuguese standards that could hardly be quite right either!

"Well?" the Conde said, with his mask-like expression, as she stood staring at him. "You do realise that I must ask for an explanation of last night, and my nephew's extraordinary conduct?"

"Yes—yes, of course!" She moved forward so hurriedly to the top of the stairs that her foot caught in the thick pile of the carpet, and but for his ready hand she might have tumbled headlong down the entire flight. "Of course!" she repeated, breathlessly.

For the first time she saw him smile in a really whimsical fashion, and his teeth were far whiter than Fernando's, while the lips parted over them were firm as well as shapely.

"You are very agitated this morning, senhorita!" he told her, retaining possession of her arm. "Surely you

do not think that I will devour you whole once I get you down to the library?"

She tried to smile naturally.

"Of course not! But, I—I haven't much of an explanation, and I was thinking it was a pity I unpacked my things last night."

"Meaning that I shall once more inform you that I do not think you are good for my nephews?"

"Yes, I'm afraid that is what you will do!"

He said nothing more until they reached the library, where he put her into a chair, and then started to pace up and down. It was, as she remembered, a beautiful room, and he fitted into it so well that she couldn't help watching him as he moved about it. There was something slightly cat-like in his stride, and the dark beauty of his face was curiously satisfying if one could only study it without wondering what his reactions were likely to be to a certain set of circumstances. The gravity of his knitted brows lent him a look of austerity, and in repose his mouth was neither hard nor harsh. And the squareness of his chin bestowed a feeling of confidence.

This was a man to be trusted, even if he was easily tried and a little unreasonable. Very unreasonable, if he was going to tell her to re-pack her things after all!

"Miss O'Farrell" She had no idea she was quite lost in thought and speculation about him until he stood in front of her and spoke levelly. "Will you accept an apology?"

"An—apology?"

"Yes, for the reception you received on the first occasion that you came here! I'm afraid you were rather more sinned against than sinning."

"I don't quite understand," she said, quietly. "You found me on the floor with your nephews, and the room in an uproar. It was hardly likely you would receive a favourable impression of me."

"Nevertheless, I did!" he told her, surprising her utterly.

She stared at him. His dark-grey eyes gazed back into hers.

"You put in an appeal for the children, and once you had gone I realised that that was a most unusual thing for a young woman who had been summarily sent about her business to bother to do. They are impossible children, as even you with your sentimental views about young things must recognise, yet something about them touched you sufficiently to make you anxious lest I should exercise my right to stem disciplinary measures that would bring home to them the enormity of their offence in despoiling my library."

"They did make a frightful mess," she agreed, "but I'm sure it was only due to an excess of high spirits."

"And you don't think they're the deplorable imps of devilment I think they are?"

She hesitated, remembering Jerry's confession about the unfortunate Rosa.

"I think they could have been more wisely handled in the past."

"I agree with you," he said, and started to pace up and down again. "But, unfortunately, my sister doesn't!"

She interposed quickly:

"I met Dona Inez this morning. She sent for me, and we had coffee together."

He swung round.

"You did?" She couldn't tell by the expression in his eyes whether he was pleased or otherwise. "And did she explain to you that as an uncle I am an ogre, and as a brother capable of understanding all that she has gone through I leave much to be desired?" His voice was very dry. "Very, very much to be desired!"

Kathleen felt suddenly extremely awkward.

"I should hardly think Dona Inez has recovered sufficiently from the tragedy of her husband's death to have opinions about very much," she ventured. "And almost certainly she is grateful to you for providing a home for herself and her two young sons."

His eyes glinted with such harsh mockery that she didn't quite like it.

"In Portugal the family is everything, and she never doubted that I would do otherwise. But Inez is beautiful, and beauty demands homage. All her life she has received it, and she can't do without it now. She forgets that in addition she possesses a family she herself was partly responsible for creating, and that the claims of beauty must be temporarily set aside until the responsibilities of motherhood have been satisfied. In other words, I think if she was to devote herself to the twins a little more than she does many problems might be simplified."

"But—but, you said that she doesn't like them to be sternly disciplined."

"She prefers to allow them to do exactly as they please! And that is an easy way out when they are quite uncontrollable! If anyone is ever to gain control over them it will not be my sister Inez!"

"Then—?" Kathleen gazed at him rather helplessly. "What—what do you suggest? Do you think that I—"

"Are the type to gain control over them in time?" He went and sat behind his desk and leaned his elbows on it and studied her openly. "Quite frankly, if you had asked me that question a week ago I would have said `No! Looking at you as you sit here now, so very much more youthful-looking even than Inez, and of rather slighter proportions, I am strongly tempted to say 'No'. But I remember that last night one of the children came seeking you, and that means that you must have made a tremendous impression. I am also strongly inclined to the view that Rosa was driven away from this house by their combined wickedness, and that they hoped you would be called upon to fill the breach. They are cunning enough for that!"

Kathleen couldn't resist smiling suddenly, so that a dimple appeared at one corner of her mouth.

"I don't think there's much doubt that they're a couple of little villains," she murmured. "But I also think it would be a mistake to take their villainy too seriously, and to treat it as unchildlike. And one mustn't overlook

the fact that they have been deprived of a parent recently, and that it may take a little time for them to settle down in Portugal — a country quite unlike America."

"And England?" he suggested, watching her still. "You find our ways a little difficult to get used to?"

"I have had no time as yet to attempt any real adjustment, senhor," she replied.

"True," he agreed, and rose and once more moved towards her. He stood looking down at her very intently. "And if I accept the fact that it may take a little while — perhaps even a considerable while — for my nephews to become adjusted to this new way of life, are you willing to cope with them for as long as that difficult phase may last? Do you promise that my home will not be altogether wrecked, and my peace shattered, if I entrust these limbs of mischief to you, and expect you to turn them into something human?"

She stood up, her face flushing delicately.

"I will do my best, senhor, but I can't promise anything. That would be unwise."

"And although you look so young you are a very wise young woman?"

"I have learned to be cautious. But I do understand children, and I will do my best — that much I can promise you!"

"Excellent!" he exclaimed, and held out his hand. The colour deepened in her cheeks as she felt his fingers grasp hers, and to her surprise they were warm, and close, and somehow sustaining. She lifted her eyes a little shyly to his face, and the deep blueness of them seemed to hold his look captive. Then it grew mildly quizzical. "And I am forgiven for my summary treatment of you?"

"I am prepared to believe that you were feeling a little tried that morning."

"Perhaps." He shrugged his shoulders slightly. "Although tried seems a mild word. For a bachelor to have his way of life upset is a serious thing, you know."

It almost escaped her lips that he wouldn't always be a bachelor, and as if he read her mind with ease he observed:

"But I promise you my children will not behave as Jeronimo and Joseph behave! Not under any circumstances!"

She turned away, feeling suddenly and most peculiarly embarrassed. Then she turned back to him. "And I am forgiven for—for last night?"

"Forget it," he said. "I don't quite know why but when I found an empty bed in the Night Nursery I suspected at once that the recent occupant of it was with you. Somehow it seemed the logical conclusion."

The dry humour in his voice caused her to send a quick look up at him, and then once more she looked away. She bit her lip.

"Nevertheless, I'm very sorry that it happened. I promise that it won't occur again."

"If I were you I wouldn't make rash promises," he said. "Remember you have just told me you have learned to be cautious." Then he terminated the interview by walking to the door and holding it open for her. "I wish you luck in this new enterprise of yours, Miss O'Farrel. If at any time you feel that you need some support I shall be on hand if you care to appeal to me!"

As she walked up the stairs she asked herself, Would she ever dare to appeal to him? Her earliest impression of him had been that he was barely human, but now she wasn't so sure. Just now he had seemed surprisingly approachable, and her fingers still tingled from that vital clasp of her hand.

And she was prepared to admit that Peggy had been right about his charm. He had a good deal of charm when he smiled.

CHAPTER SIX

BUT the next few weeks were not easy, all the same. Charm in rare moments has a great deal of virtue if you are never brought into contact with the qualities that take over when it is absent, and Kathleen found that her employer was more often aloof than friendly. And the twins were by no means easy to handle, even though she prided herself that she understood children.

By degrees, however, she discovered the knack of bringing them to heel when they threatened to become unmanageable, in the way that they had done whilst in the care of the unfortunate Rosa. She warned them that one really bad piece of behaviour on their part would recoil on her, and that would result in her dismissal. Whether she entirely believed this in her own heart she wasn't quite sure, but she did know that the threat of losing her was sufficient to bring an acute look of anxiety to the small faces of Jerry and Joe, and they promised to mend their ways without delay. Which, of course, they didn't do in any very noticeable fashion, but at least they refrained from deliberate naughtiness.

On the whole, Kathleen managed them in a fashion that should have merited approval, if any close observer had felt like rewarding her with approval. But no one apparently did. The children's mother merely looked amused when no one complained of their abandoned habits for over a week, and the Conde really saw very little indeed of them.

Kathleen wished he hadn't insisted on her having meals in the dining-room, for this was not merely a strain which she could have dispensed with but it imposed on her a burden of anxiety which robbed the meals of any sort of pleasure. They were usually long-drawn-out, and although Maria took over the twins at lunch time Kathleen could never be quite certain that her charges wouldn't take advantage of her temporary absence. They delighted in tormenting Maria, as she knew, and the

harassed wonder concerning what they were getting up to while she sat in state at a long table went close to upsetting her digestion for the first time in her life.

At lunch, however, she could sometimes count on being alone, for the Conde seemed to have many luncheon appointments in the course of a week that kept him away from the quinta for several hours at a time. When he did lunch at home he frequently contrived to be a little late, so that Kathleen was more than half-way through her meal when he put in an appearance. His sister kept so much to her apartments that she seldom, if ever, conferred the benefit of her society on Kathleen in the middle of the day; but at night it was different, and she liked to make a kind of grand entry into the dining-room wearing something so spectacular that Kathleen felt inclined to gasp when she looked at her.

Her wardrobe must have cost a small fortune, and although it contained a lot of black it was not what a Portuguese widow might normally have been expected to choose. It was extremely smart and ultra-fashionable black, and usually it was relieved by touches of gold or silver, and frequently by a daringly bright colour.

Kathleen felt she would never forget the first night that she dined at the same table as the Conde and his sister. To begin with the room was so magnificent, and the Conde was wearing a white dinner jacket and a black cummerbund that made him appear almost devastatingly handsome and far removed from the type of men with whom she was accustomed to sharing evening meals. Shane, for instance, who usually wore an open-necked shirt — admittedly he liked it to be freshly-laundered, and he had a weakness for silk shirts

and was persuaded with difficulty into a dinner jacket he had had for years.

Dona Inez looked quite as startling as her brother in very dark crimson silk, and there was a collar of rubies encircling her lovely white throat, and a heavy bracelet of rubies weighed down one of her slender wrists. Kathleen, in embroidered white linen that actually suited her very well indeed and was a bargain she had

picked up at quite an exclusive little dress shop before she left London, felt as ordinary as a white china teacup by comparison with some lovely pieces of Sevres as she sat there at the flower-decked, glittering table between them.

Dona Inez merely picked at her food, and she attributed her lack of appetite to one of her heads. Her brother directed at her a long, cool, somewhat disconcerting stare, and suggested that her 'heads' would disappear altogether, and her appetite improve vastly, if she took a little more exercise, and remained less segregated.

Dona Inez didn't attempt to argue the matter, but she slid rather a peculiar smile along the table at Kathleen.

"You'll remember I told you that my brother has ideas about women," she murmured. "They must conform to pattern!"

"Which you most certainly do not," Miguel said shortly.

She made a slight movement with her shoulders, and again her eyes rested on Kathleen.

"I do not think our little Miss O'Farrel here is the type to conform to pattern, either," she observed softly.

This time the suave, dark man at the head of the table didn't answer, and instead he seemed to give extra attention to the careful paring of the peach he had selected — which in any case he did very beautifully with his long, sensitive fingers. And Kathleen was certain the reason why he remained silent was because he didn't think there was any real pattern she need conform to —unless it was the pattern of a capable governess!

Another night there were several dinner guests, and amongst them was the brown-eyed Fernando who had waited while Inez completed a hurried toilet in order to be with him as quickly as possible. His full name was Fernando Queiroz, and on the second occasion that Kathleen came face to face with him he was in a very subdued mood, and nothing could have been more correct than the manner in which he bent over her hand

when they were introduced. He was accompanied by —or, rather, he was escorting — a very plump matron and her daughter, and there could be no doubt about it the latter looked upon him as rather more than an acquaintance. She was rather a colourless, shy young thing, and she obviously had her mama's full permission to send shy, adoring looks up into his eyes whenever he was not making strenuous efforts to avoid them, and also to avoid the strangely inscrutable gaze of Dona Inez on the opposite side of the table.

Kathleen thought, with a slight sensation of shock, that Inez was deliberately seeking to compel him to look across at her, and remembering that he had been described as a 'very particular friend' of the widow, she wondered what sort of a relationship there existed between them, and whether the Conde had the least idea of it. If he had he seemed to go out of his way to be particularly pleasant to the pale young girl, and in the magnificent sala after dinner he was most noticeably attentive to her and drew both her and Fernando into a long conversation which isolated the three of them from the rest of the room. Inez, looking bored, turned to one of the other guests for diversion, and although she continued to look bored she refrained from attaching herself to Fernando when a little later on he was left temporarily standing alone.

Instead she turned a slightly disdainful, and creamily beautiful, shoulder to him, and it was Kathleen he hastened across to, as if he had been hoping for an opportunity to speak to her.

"You like it here in Portugal, senhorita?" he asked, and once more his brown eyes told her that to him an attractive young woman was a magnet which must unfailingly draw him, even though it was highly likely he was betrothed to be married.

She smiled at him very slightly.

"I haven't had much opportunity yet to find out

senhor," she replied. "But it's very beautiful," she added.

"And you are beautiful," he told her, with some-

what surprising directness. "When Inez told me the other

day that you were a governess I could hardly believe her!"

"Because governesses, in your experience, are normally plain?" she asked, wondering whether she ought to freeze him from the outset.

The admiration behind his thick dark eyelashes grew so that she was certain she ought to do so.

"As a matter of fact," he confessed, in his slightly accented English, while he looked down at her almost caressingly, "the only governess I ever had any really close contact with was the one who looked after me when I was a child, and she was as plain as a plate! A utilitarian, nursery plate!"

"Then I only hope she made up in strictness what she lacked in looks," Kathleen answered, deliberately turning her glance away from him. "In my experience little boys need strict governesses, and are better off with tutors!"

He laughed — rather an engaging laugh.

"But if that is true you will soon find yourself out of a job! Don't tell me Inez's twins are too much for you already?"

She looked down at her hands, with their delicate pink fingernails that shone like shells beneath the brilliant lighting in the sala, and replied a little stiffly:

"I think at the moment we are getting along quite well."

"Then you must continue to get along very well, because I want you to stay here." It didn't sound audacious, but she knew it was. "And that precious pair of imps have already accounted for half-a-dozen young women who have devoted themselves to their welfare. You mustn't follow the same road, because there isn't another golden-headed young woman in the whole of Amara . . . At least, not one I've been fortunate enough to encounter! Not one with pale primrose hair . . . Like the primroses you gather in England in the spring! I was in England last year, and—"

A shadow loomed behind them, and the Conde de Chaves bent a remote, grave look on Kathleen.

"If you wish to retire, Miss O'Farrel, you mustn't let us keep you," he said. "I realise you've probably had quite a tiring day looking after my nephews."

She felt disconcerted, and, all at once, acutely embarrassed. Was he trying to make it clear to her she wasn't expected to mingle with his guests quite so freely once dinner was over, even if he did permit her to meet them at the table? With the colour mantling her throat and chin and brow she stood up, and her sudden confusion showed in her eyes.

"I'm sorry, senhor!" she heard herself saying jerkily. "I mean, I . . . Yes; I would like to retire, if it's all right for me to do so . . ."

Her voice trailed off, and Fernando said protestingly: "But the night is young yet! . ."

His host silenced him with a curt reminder that the young woman he would shortly be escorting home was expecting him to rejoin her at the other end of the room, and Fernando bowed in front of Kathleen, with a slightly resentful expression in his extraordinarily beautiful brown eyes, and accepted the hint that he was neglecting his duty. Kathleen murmured rather an indistinguishable goodnight to her employer, and turned away, too. But he put out a hand as if he would stay her for a moment.

"I'm quite sure you are tired," he remarked, regarding her thoughtfully. "No doubt you sometimes find the twins a little exhausting?"

"So exhausting that I would be happier upstairs in my room after dinner," she returned crisply. "In fact, I would be happier if I could have dinner in my room as well."

His black eyebrows ascended.

"All work and no play makes Jill a dull girl," he said "That would not do at all. You must most certainly mix with my guests when they are here."

"Thank you, senhor, you are most kind," she said, and left him with his eyebrows still a little raised, and she had the distinct impression that he watched her as she left the room.

After that she was careful to remove herself from the sala at the earliest possible moment that she could do so without being noticed once coffee had been served in the evenings; and when there was a very large number of guests before coffee was handed round.

It was always a relief to her to escape, for in the capacity of an employee she felt she had no right to engage the attention of any of the guests — hadn't the Conde made it plain that he disapproved of Fernando conversing with her just for a few minutes? And although most of the Conde's close friends spoke English beautifully, and made it quite unnecessary for her to try out on them her strictly limited Portuguese, she felt that they addressed her purely out of politeness and not through any desire to get to know her.

They were well-bred, cultivated, quietly poised people, and their manners were impeccable. But to them she was just a young woman from England who earned her living by looking after other people's children, and very few of them entertained their own Portuguese governesses — if they employed them — in the drawing-room. Such useful people had quarters of their own, and it was almost certainly because she was English that the Conde and his sister permitted her to meet their friends. That and the fact that she had a brother and sister-in-law living in the neighbourhood who were not precisely socially inferior, but part and parcel of an artistic circle which was outside the milieu of these very conventional Portuguese.

Kathleen didn't want patronage, and she didn't want to make herself a nuisance, so she stayed up in her room while the talk and the subdued laughter, and occasionally some light classical music arranged for the entertainment of the guests, went on in the sumptuous saki. And if it was a very warm and brilliant night she opened her windows wide and curled up on the window-seat, and listened to the seductive crooning of the sea, and watched the stars as if they fascinated her. And if she could escape from a side door without anyone seeing her she went out into the garden and walked the dimly-seen

paths and delighted in the silken softness of the air, and the scent of the countless flowers.

It was such an enchanting place, not in the least like a formal English garden, and the little nooks and arbours delighted her. In one small enclosed space there would be a fountain playing in a tile-lined basin, and in another a square of velvety turf would feel delicious to the tread. There were roses blooming in profusion, and they were finer than any she had seen at home in England, and gold-fish transported themselves in translucent pools. There was also a magnificent terrace at the rear of the house where dinner guests frequently sipped aperitifs before the leisurely meal was served, and often strolled during the course of the evening.

Kathleen, when she was enjoying one of her nocturnal walks, was always careful to keep out of range of the windows that opened outwards on to this terrace, and the stray pair of observant eyes that might follow her movements in the garden.

Not that there was any reason why she shouldn't stroll in the garden, but the Conde was an unpredictable person, and he might have views on the correctness of her doing so at that hour, and alone. It might not be in accordance with Portuguese punctilio.

In the mornings — and what glorious mornings they were, before the heat of the sun cast its inertia over the flowers and the walks — Kathleen and the children took their daily exercise in the garden. She had made the discovery that for her and the two lively small boys placed in her charge life was to be very restricted, and any entertainment that was to come their way they must make for themselves. Apart from weekly visits to Amara for hair-cutting, the odd visit to the dentist, and so forth, there were no organised outings. There was no question of walks, unless they were walks in the grounds, and visits to the beach were not encouraged. Although they were so close to the sea, and holiday-makers poured into Amara who took fullest advantage of it, when Kathleen approached Dona Inez for permission to take her sons for an hour or so on to the sands where she herself

had relaxed and enjoyed herself during her brief holiday it was somewhat regretfully refused.

"This is not America, and my brother would not approve," she said. She shrugged her shoulders and looked languidly amused. "You do not understand how rigidly he feels about these things! . . . Our kind of families do not mix with the hoi polloi! And on the beach there is no caste distinction!"

Kathleen gazed back at her rather helplessly.

"But surely there must be children in the district, suitable children with whom Jerry and Joe could play sometimes?" she suggested.

Dona Inez shook her head with sudden firmness.

"That would cause a disturbance in the house," she replied; "and I agree with my brother that such a disturbance would be undesirable."

So it wasn't only the Conde who held views about the children that were not altogether for the children's good!

Thrown back upon her own resources Kathleen invented games that kept the young Curtises out of mischief, and it was surprising how successful she was in getting them interested in the once despised lessons. She had handled backward children before, and Jerry and Joe were distinctly backward, but that was because no one had ever persevered with them not because they were lacking in intellect. On the contrary, their intelligence was rather high, and her method of teaching them to read resulted in an earnest desire to master for themselves the contents of the books on the shelves. Not the Portugese ones! "I will never learn to read Portugese like fat Rosa!" Jerry declared once, but as Kathleen felt certain he would be attending a Portugese school before very long she could have told him that was an idle vow.

On the whole the days didn't hang too heavily on either her or the children's hands, but there were moments when she felt peculiarly isolated in the Quinta Cereus. There was no one of her own kind with whom she could talk even for a brief while, and the servants she felt sure regarded her as an outsider. She didn't

speak much Portugese, and she was the sister of an artist who sold pictures for a living in Amara. It didn't matter that they were good pictures. The gulf between her and the Conde and his sister was vast—or so she persuaded herself.

After three whole weeks she hadn't had an afternoon off, and when Peggy telephoned her one morning and suggested that she get permission to have dinner with them that night she decided there was no real reason why she shouldn't. Dona Inez seemed a trifle surprised when she approached her, and then belatedly seemed to realise that the girl was entitled to a certain amount of free time. She said that Maria could take over a few hours each week if she wanted to visit her relatives, and delighted by this somewhat niggardly concession Kathleen sped back to the telephone and told Peggy she would be with them in time for tea.

"I'll leave everything ready for the twins, and Maria will see to their supper," she said. "I'm simply longing to see you both again!"

"I should hope you are!" Peggy exclaimed. "We're longing to see you, and I'm dying to hear all your news! Shane, however, is annoyed because you seem to have been kept a prisoner since you took on that job!"

"Oh, no," Kathleen assured her. "It isn't as bad as that."

Dona Inez hadn't offered to place a car at her disposal, or told her to request one of the chauffeurs to drive her into Amara. So she set out and walked to her brother's villa, and although she arrived fresh and smiling—or reasonably so—Shane was still further annoyed, because it was a very hot afternoon and she was undoubtedly perspiring a little. Also her white buckskin sandals that had been immaculate when she started off were covered with dust from the road.

"The very least the Conde might have done was offer you some means of transport," Shane declared indignantly. "What does he think you are? A Portuguese peasant woman?"

Kathleen sank down luxuriously in one of the deep, comfortable chairs in the cool lounge, and smiled at him soothingly.

"The Conde is the Conde," she said, "and one doesn't trouble him about small matters such as a governess's means of transport. And, besides, I don't think he knows I've got the afternoon off.'

"It's high time you had an afternoon off," Shane returned belligerently. "The question of your off-duty should have been gone into when you accepted the post."

"If you'll remember I didn't exactly accept the post," Kathleen murmured demurely. "In the end I was more or less commandeered by the Conde."

"All the more reason why he should treat you decently," Shane said bluntly, with ready Irish aggressiveness.

Peggy intervened.

"Kathleen doesn't look as if she's been treated badly," she observed. "On the contrary, she has a smug look of satisfaction about her, as if she's well aware that she's succeeded where it was strongly suspected she would fail." She seated herself in a corner of a chesterfield close to her sister-in-law, and offered her the cigarettes. "Now, darling, begin at the beginning and tell us all about it!" she requested. "What sort of a room have you been given, and are you wallowing in luxury? Do you and the Conde fight frequently, or only once a week? And how do you get on with the twins?"

Kathleen derived a certain satisfaction from admitting that she and the Conde had ceased to fight, and the rest of Peggy's questions she answered with as much detail as the other could desire. The afternoon and evening passed pleasantly—particularly for Kathleen, who had had such little adult conversation recently—and even Shane grew mollified when he realised that his sister had few complaints. In fact, as she admitted, she would be unreasonable if she complained about anything. So far as her creature comforts were concerned she had never been so lavishly provided for in her life.

Shane drove her back to the quinta at about ten o'clock, but she insisted on being dropped at the ornamental gates, instead of allowing him to proceed up the driye to the impressive front entrance. It wasn't, as she explained, that she didn't want to be seen returning, but she had formed the habit of keeping out of the limelight as much as possible—particularly in the evenings—and she would prefer to slip quietly in at the side door.

Shane looked at her, so young and slight and touchingly lovely in the moonlight, and resentment stirred in him afresh.

"Look here, Kathie," he began. "If this isn't the sort of job you really like—if you'd rather go back to England and find something else! , ?If these people make you feel an outsider . . ."

"No, of course they don't," she reassured him. But she spoke quickly and quietly, almost as if she would have liked to put a finger to her lips to warn him not to be too loudly because she didn't want anyone to overhear . And even to herself she couldn't have explained that disinclination for being seen just then by anyone from the house. She wanted to steal away, as she had said, and enter her room without the knowledge of anyone who visited at the quinta, or normally dwelt beneath its roof.

Shane frowned a little, and let in his clutch. The business of turning his ancient car in rather a confined space seemed to make a shatteringly loud noise in the silent night, and Kathie felt herself frowning a Little, too. Then she kissed her hand to Shane, and turned away.

It was a wonderful, warm, and rather breathless night, and the noise of the sea was a soft and sensuous murmur. The atmosphere seemed laden with exotic scents, and Kathleen paused for a moment to draw them deep into her lungs before she moved forward like an anxious white ghost in the gloom.

But she had barely taken a step before someone stepped in front of her. The Conde's voice asked quietly:

"Was that your brother who was with you just now, Miss O'Farrel?"

CHAPTER SEVEN

KATHLEEN was so startled that she actually recoiled. The Conde looked down at her from a height that seemed far above her, and the whiteness of his dinner jacket pierced the gloom like a knife. She could see the dark carnation he wore in the lapel, and above the bewildering scents that were all about her she seemed to catch the spicy odour of it as if its perfume was extra penetrating.

"Was that your brother, Miss O'Farrel?" he repeated, and she nodded silently, and then found her voice.

"Yes, I—I've been spending the evening with him and my sister-in-law."

"I noticed your absence at dinner. My sister dined out, but Filippo informed me that you'd been granted permission to take the rest of the day off."

She heard herself saying defensively:

"It was the first half-day I've had since I came here!" The Conde nodded.

"That is so. And I'm afraid your brother thinks that you've been rather badly used!"

Kathleen felt oddly appalled.

"You—you overheard . . .?"

To her considerable surprise the dark face above her smiled in the richness of the shadows, and his white teeth gleamed with unmistakably dry humour.

"You know the proverb ... Listeners seldom hear any good of themselves!"

Suddenly she felt his fingers grasping her arm, and he led her up the drive towards the lighted quinta.

"Tell me," he said quietly, "why do you persist in haunting these grounds alone at night as if you were a restless spirit, or a lonely wraith? I've watched you from the windows, and once I nearly came in pursuit of you, but I knew that you would evade me if you could and probably slip inside by the back door!" His fingers held her arm strongly. "It isn't good enough," he said, with

a sudden touch of gravity in his rather charming voice —particularly when he spoke English in that effortless way. "It isn't good because you're a young and very attractive woman, and these are deserted grounds at night! And you even declined to allow your brother to drive you up to the front door. Why?"

"I—I don't know. . . ." She heard herself stammering. "At least, I know why I usually walk in the garden. . Because I like walking in a garden at night, and this is one of the most beautiful I've ever known! Also it's very warm, and I'm not always ready for bed."

"Then why do you leave the saki so early?"

She felt caught, and didn't answer.

"No matter," he said, in the same quiet voice. "Obviously you do not wish to remain with the rest of us, possibly because you find us all excessively dull and your own company much more preferable. But, your brother, tonight. . . . He disliked setting you down at the gates, and he seemed to think you are not very happy amongst us. Is that so?"

Kathleen didn't know how to answer him, and she was thankful when they reached the blaze of light that streamed from the house, only to feel his guiding hand propelling her forward along a path that was an off-shoot of the main drive, and which led them once more into velvety darkness. She could feel the crispness of shaven turf beneath her feet, and an ornamental pool gleamed with moonlight in front of them. And then a pale marble garden seat loomed up close at hand, and the Conde thrust her down gently but firmly on to it.

"It is time, perhaps, that you and I had another little talk," he said. "A talk about how well you are settling down here!"

This was not what Kathleen had expected at this late hour of the evening, but she realised he had overheard Shane's angry inference, and something had to be done about it.

"I am settling down very well, senhor."

"Your brother did not seem to share that opinion." "He thought perhaps I might feel—strange. .

"He suggested you might like to return home to England,"

She made a little gesture with her hands.

"Naturally, I occasionally feel homesick. . . ."

"With your closest relatives near at hand?" peering at her through the warm darkness. "I understand you have no parents?"

"No, that is true. There is only Shane and I—Shane and I and Peggy, my sister-in-law."

"Well, then, with the ties of blood satisfied, what is wrong?"

"Nothing, senhor."

She looked down at her hands this time, and she was clasping them closely in her lap.

He took out a gleaming cigarette-case and offered it to her, but she shook her head. He lighted one himself, and the fragrance of it seemed to surround them.

"There is, perhaps someone at home in England, whom you miss?"

The suggestion took her by surprise, and she shook her head with unnecessary vigour.

"There is no one at home in England whom I particularly miss!"

"Good," he said softly, and studied the glowing tip of his cigarette. "I felt it necessary to make the enquiry because you are young, and, as I think I have said once before tonight, very attractive, and it would be only natural if you were betrothed, or thinking of becoming betrothed to someone you were unhappy at being separated from. And in that case I could have understood your occasional homesickness."

"It isn't really homesickness, senhor." She felt she had to get this matter cleared up, and Shane's part in it made it less ungracious. "But this afternoon was the first afternoon I have been away from the quinta for three weeks, and not unnaturally my relatives were beginning to think.. . . Well, it is customary to have a certain amount of free time—time away from one's job—and Shane was a little surprised because I hadn't been to see them before. Also. . ."

"Yes?" very quietly.

"Also, I—" And then she paused. She hadn't meant to say that she had had to walk there, but Miguel de Chaves was insistent, and she finished lamely. "I was a little hot when I arrived, and rather dusty. Not nearly as hot as they thought, of course—"

"You mean you walked?" His voice sounded acutely shocked.

"Yes, of course. But it was really rather pleasant."

He ground out his cigarette beneath the heel of his shoe, and when he turned to her again she was certain he was actually disturbed.

"But, I never heard of anything so—so neglectful in my life! What was my sister thinking of? Didn't she even offer you a car? She should have insisted on Janelas driving you to your brother's, and arranging to pick you up when you wanted to come home. But to allow you to walk! . . ." His displeasure seemed actually to rise up in his throat and choke him a little, and she had never heard him utter so many short sentences so quickly, and with such emphasis. "I don't wonder your brother was annoyed, and that he has received the impression we are treating you badly!"

"No, no," she said quickly, "not badly! I am very comfortable here!"

He ignored the interruption.

"It is the second time you have been badly used since your arrival in this house—no; the third! The first was when you had spend an evening alone in your room, and had your meal sent up to you on a tray. The second, when you received the impression I wished to dismiss you from the sala because that over-impressionable Fernando Queiroz was all set to make of himself a nuisance and I had to do something about it. The third, when you have to walk in the heat of the day to your brother's home. I am angry!"

She couldn't doubt it. His shapely hands, with a gold crested ring on one tapering finger, were flung out towards her, and his voice vibrated with the keen edge of annoyance. He stood up and paced up and down near

her for a few seconds, and then he returned to her and suggested with more composure:

"It would please you if your brother and his wife received an invitation to dinner here one night?"

She was astounded.

"But—but, why should you—?"

"It would please you?" he wanted to know, peering down at her.

"I— Well, of course, it would be very nice."

"Then an invitation shall be sent to them." He sat down beside her again. "On the only occasion I met your sister-in-law I thought she was very charming, and there must be no more of this feeling you are cut off from your friends. In future you will visit them at least once weekly, and I will see to it that you are driven there by Janelas, and he will also bring you back in the evening. And if you wish to do shopping in Amara you have only to ask for a car."

"Th-thank you, senhor." She felt overpowered. "You are very kind."

"Not at all." All at once his voice was very dry. "Don't think I haven't noticed the improvement in my nephews—a mild improvement; but, nevertheless, an improvement—since you took over the charge of them, and I wouldn't want to lose you at this stage. Who knows, a few more months of your gentle guidance and they may resemble a couple of small human beings!"

She felt herself flushing under cover of the darkness. She stood up and found that unexpectedly they were very close to one another, and something of his intense masculinity seemed to reach out at her so that for the first time she was really and almost uncomfortably aware of him as a man.

"So you see," he murmured, his chin on a level with the very tip of her head, his tobacco-scented breath lightly stirring her hair, "it would never do if we were to lose you now!"

"I don't think there's—very much danger," she said jerkily, "I've grown very fond of Jerry and Joe!"

"And they of you? I'm quite sure they have grown very fond of you!"

"I don't know," she answered, and turned quickly away.

"But I do." He fell into step beside her as she moved back along the path. "Jerry and Joe were your slaves from the beginning, and I think they would wreck the household now if you were suddenly whisked away from them."

"Oh, I don't know." She tried to speak lightly, and to sound entirely natural, but those brief moments when they were standing face to face had done something to her that she didn't yet understand, but she knew that there was an odd fluttery feeling in her throat, as if she was suddenly breathless. "Little boys don't really enjoy acting the part of slaves, and all they really ask of Life is that someone shall be very fond of them while they're still young."

"And when they're older? When they're no longer little boys? Do grown men find it difficult to act the part of slaves?"

"I—I don't know! But who wants a slave, anyway?" still striving after lightness, and very nearly missing her footing as she attempted to move forward quickly in the narrow path.

Miguel de Chaves' arm clasped her shoulders quickly, and held her tightly for a moment.

"The first morning you were with us you very nearly tumbled down the stairs," he said, reminiscently. "Is it those absurd high heels you wear, or are you unduly nervous sometimes?" As she didn't answer, because of that fluttery feeling in her throat, he continued the conversation where it had threatened to break off. "Most men, I imagine, experience a slave-like devotion at least once in their lives, and women don't normally spurn devotion. At least, they shouldn't! It can add colour and charm to their existence, and provide them with a wonderful feeling of security."

Kathleen said nothing, and as they emerged on to the lighted space before the house he dropped his hand

from her shoulder. All in a moment he became once more the aloof but courteous employer.

"Goodnight, Miss O'Farrel," he said, with one of his formal little bows. "I am glad we have had this opportunity to talk, and in future I think you will find your life a little easier here. Less restricted, and therefore more pleasant. At any rate, I hope so!"

Then he turned on his heel and left her to enter the house by herself, while he disappeared once more along the dimness of the tiled path.

Was he continuing his walk purely for exercise, in order to think over her reactions, or because he had other, far more pleasant, things to think about? She remembered the way his breath had stirred her hair when they stood close together, and the strength of his arm as it clasped her shoulders. She wished she knew whether a part of his thoughts would dwell upon her as he went sauntering into the darkness, and at the same time she felt slightly bewildered because she so consciously desired him to think about her.

Only three weeks ago she had decided that he was completely unlikable. Now . . .?

How did she think and feel about him now?

As she went up the stairs she told herself that the less she thought about him after her experience tonight the better. And recalling how his informality had dropped away from him when they stepped into the radius of light from the house she repeated this piece of advice to herself with emphasis.

As a man who understood women, and had no mean opinion of his own capacity to charm, no doubt he occasionally made use of that charm to gain a point. And the point he wished to be sure of at the moment was that she would not run away back to England when she was beginning to mildly discipline his nephews.

In the morning he paid his first visit to the nurseries in the daytime since she had taken on her present position. He appeared in the big Day Nursery while she was listening to Joe's laborious attempt to spell out words,

and Jerry was leaning against her other knee. She was sitting in a low chair covered in attractive chintz, and her head was bent above the children and the huge picture-book that was spread open on her lap, and her soft gold hair fell forward and lightly caressed her cheeks. Her feathery eyelashes formed enchanting half-circles that fluttered on those same delicately flushed cheeks.

It was concentration that brought the flushed look to her face, and when she raised her eyes they were clear and blue and bright with excitement because Joe, at last, seemed to be making progress. She was just about to praise

him and give him one of the hugs she occasionally

on him—for he liked being hugged—when the slight noise in the doorway caused her to glance up, and it seemed to her that Miguel de Chaves eyes were gazing straight into hers.

An altogether inexplicable expression stole into the dark grey depths as they watched her, and for no reason at all her heart started to beat rapidly.

"Good morning," he said quietly, and she put the two small boys aside and stood up.

"Good morning, senhor!"

She wondered whether it struck him that her voice had a slightly breathless note in it.

The Conde advanced into the room, and she said hurriedly to Jerry and Joe that they must greet their uncle. They did so like two small automatons, and with a touch of Portuguese formality, while their hands reached behind them for her pink cotton skirt. As on another occasion she strove to detach their fingers, but the Conde merely smiled and said with a hint of wryness:

"They feel safe with you, and they are alarmed by my appearance! I am the uncle who is really an ogre and eats small boys!"

"Oh, I—I'm sure that isn't what they think!" But Kathleen knew there wasn't much conviction in her voice. "They are a little surprised, that is all."

"Because I don't often visit you here in the nurseries? Well, we can put that right, at least!" He held out his hand to Jerry. "Come here, Jeronimo! And you, too,

Joseph, if you can tear yourself away from Miss O'Farrell I can understand that you feel happier holding her hand, but I have come up here specially to visit you, and it is only polite to shake hands, you know!"

The two small boys shook hands, and then darted back to Kathleen.

The Conde laughed.

"There must be something wrong with my methods," he said drily.

Kathleen dared to make a suggestion.

"Perhaps if you called them Jerry and Joe—instead of Jeronimo and Joseph!—it would help," she said.

"You think so?" His eyes went to her, and she received the impression that he was not paying much attention to her suggestion but was intrigued by something about her. "Very well! Jerry and Joe it shall be in future, and we will see whether that will yield results. And now as a short break from routine I suggest that I take you all three for a drive while the air is still reasonably cool. Would you like that—Jerry and Joe?"

Jerry gaped at him.

"You mean you will take us for a drive?"

The dark grey eyes smiled lazily at him.

"If you feel that it will provide you with some enjoyment."

"In your big black car? The one that is all shiny with silver, and goes like the wind?"

The Conde nodded, and leaned against the door. "Have you a weakness for fast cars, my son? I never knew it!"

Jerry nodded, his eyes gleaming.

"Janelas never drives fast—he is too afraid!" he said scornfully, and a little unreasonably, since Janelas always received his instructions beforehand. "But you do, I know. I've seen you!"

The Conde laughed again, but this time it was a genuinely amused laugh. He glanced across at Kathleen, and at the twinkle in his eyes she smiled.

"Then if Miss O'Farrel is not nervous we will risk a little fast driving this morning," he said, and put a

hand on the boy's rough red head. "Are you nervous, Miss O'Farrel?" he enquired.

A slight swinging of the golden hair answered him, and Jerry and Joe both gurgled in delight. In fact, they whooped with delight. A little anxious lest their enthusiasm should not altogether please their uncle. Kathleen urged them towards the door of the Night Nursery, observing that if they were to be taken out they must be made presentable, but Miguel called after her a little sharply.

"You will make no alteration in your appearance, will you, Miss O'Farrel? You look delightful as you are!"

Kathleen felt herself colouring furiously, and she stammered:

"Not—not if you don't wish me to!"

"I don't," he said quietly, and almost gravely, and his lustrous eyes gazed straight into hers.

He said he would wait for them on the drive in front of the house, and when they joined him Jerry and Joe were shining like a couple of new pins, and wearing beautifully-laundered white silk shirts and little pale blue shorts. They had also been persuaded into short white socks and patent-leather shoes instead of their usual open-toed sandals. Kathleen was still wearing her pink cotton dress, and the only concession she had made to the outing was that she was a white straw hat in her hand, and had a white pouch handbag tucked underneath her arm.

The children's uncle let his gaze rest on all three of them, but it lingered longest on Kathleen.

"You will do very nicely," he said. Then, as he continued to study Kathleen, added a little disconcertingly: "Very nicely indeed!"

He put the boys into the back of the car and locked the doors, so that however much advantage they took of their splendid isolation they would not fall out, and insisted on Kathleen sitting beside him in the front. She would have much preferred to be with the children, and even suggested it was not altogether safe leaving them to their own devices; she was thinking of the pearl-grey

upholstery, and the twins' delight in getting to the bottom of simple mysteries such as chromium-plated gadgets for the storage of cigarettes and reception of ash, roof lights, etc. But the Conde didn't seem to care just then whether extensive depredations were wrought to the inside of his car, and he told Kathleen that the drive would not be very pleasant for her if she was going to concern herself overmuch with her charges. So she sat back feeling a little awkward and slightly perplexed, because after all her job was to look after the children and only a few weeks ago he would have administered a rebuff if she had permitted them to get out of hand.

Now, all at once, he was mellowing to an extra-ordinary degree, and she didn't know quite how to account for it.

But the drive was so pleasant that after a time she forgot her preoccupation with the twins, and began to enjoy it. She remembered what Peggy had said about the superb comfort of his car. It was even more luxurious than his chauffeur-driven cars, and his method of handling it proved him to be expert at the controls. She could tell that he normally liked to travel at great speed, for it was only when the speedometer registered nearly eighty miles an hour on a reasonably straight stretch of the winding coast road that he glanced at her and instantly started to slow.

"Sorry!" he said. "I know you said that you didn't object to speed, but the purpose of this outing is to show you a little of our countryside. And to give pleasure to our passengers in the back, of course!"

The passengers in the back were shrieking with delight, and hanging on to the straps that were there for the purpose of maintaining balance; but Kathleen was glad when they were travelling at a more decorous rate and she could see how beautiful was this corner of Portugal where she now earned her living. They had turned inland from the sea, and there were cork forests rising against the sky, and chestnut forests, and miles and miles of cultivated fields and vineyards. The vineyards secretly thrilled her with the thought of the slowly swelling grapes lying out

there beneath the hot sun, to be crushed into wine at the time of the wine-harvest; and she wondered how many of those terraced slopes were the property of the man beside her, who was, as she knew, an immensely rich landowner. As if he read her thoughts he informed her conversationally:

"At the time of the wine-harvest our people make merry as well as toil hard. It is far too early yet to be thinking of celebrations and the crushing of the grapes, but in the autumn you will see how everybody enjoys themselves. And you, too, will probably have some little part in the enjoyment!"

"You mean that there are festas and things?"

"There are celebrations, as I said. Much dancing and singing . . . particularly singing! You have yet to hear our Portuguese fados. Such sad, simple songs, and yet so full of charm, quite unlike any other songs you will hear in any other corner of the world."

"I have heard them in Lisbon," she said. "At one of the popular restaurants."

"Ah, but that is a very different thing to hearing them here on the lips of the truly simple people."

"You employ many people?" she heard herself asking. "You own many of these vineyards, don't you?"

He waved a careless hand to indicate the extent of his possessions.

"As far as you can see," he told her. "As far as you will see until we reach the outskirts of Amara."

"We are going into Amara?" she asked rather quickly, hoping that her curiosity hadn't sounded a little crude.

"We will provide those two small creatures in the back with some ice-cream, or a cooling drink, and then we will return by way of a little valley that I think you will find enchanting. And perhaps there we will stretch our legs, and your charges might pick you a bunch of wild flowers—although the season for wild flowers at their very best is over."

"You mean the springtime?" she said.

"Springtime in Portugal is—beautiful!" he said, and in the way in which he said it convinced her that in his opinion Portugal was always beautiful.

It seemed strange — in fact, very strange — to be sitting at a small table on a raised hotel terrace mopping up ice-cream as it trickled down the sides of Jerry's and Joe's mouths in the company of the uncle they held in so much awe. Kathleen would not have believed, when they started out, that he would have permitted himself to be seen in public with these two small encumbrances and herself—nothing more than a nursery-governess whom he himself employed. And although it was true he selected the most exclusive hotel in the town for refreshment that could have been enjoyed beneath an ordinary café umbrella, he didn't look as if he was actually revolted when a lump of strawberry ice landed on Joe's bare knee, and Jerry threatened to overturn the vase of flowers in the centre of the table.

He merely told the children quietly to behave, and then looked across at Kathleen and smiled whirimirally.

"What a life you must have," he said, "disciplining—or striving to discipline!—these two! We shall have to think up a reward for you that will make it all worthwhile!"

But she didn't feel in need of any reward as they returned to the car, and he once more put her into the seat beside him. In this relaxed, indulgent mood of his he could hardly have been more pleasant, and she was beginning to be certain that Peggy had underrated his charm. Every time he smiled at her and she saw his white, perfect teeth flash brilliantly by contrast with his dark face, and his sea-grey eyes underwent curious softening processes that rendered them disturbingly handsome watching her as they did between his thick eyelashes, her heart behaved in a peculiar fashion. And sitting beside him and watching his hands on the wheel, strong and firm and shapely and exquisitely cared-for, was a pleasure in itself. The whiteness of his cuffs emphasised the lean brown strength of his wrists, and the

heavy gold ring that was embellished by a crest winked on his middle finger in the gay morning sunshine.

But the heat of the day was increasing, and it was pleasant when they reached the little valley he had talked to her about to leave the car and wander for a while in the cool shade of the trees. It was all too short a while for Kathleen, who was prepared to agree that it was an entrancing valley, with tall, straight trunks rising up on both sides, a carpet of velvety-textured grass, and a little stream meandering through it The wild flowers were few but brilliant—nothing like the glory that must have spread itself there in the spring, and saturated the air with perfume.

Jerry and Joe, once they were released from the car, raced across the floor of the valley and made for the stream. They knelt beside it and delightedly scooped water into their hands, to the detriment of their silk blouses and brief blue shorts, and Kathleen made to go after them and prevent them ruining their appearance altogether. But Miguel stopped her with a hand laid on her arm.

"Leave them," he said. "We are here only for a few minutes, and small harm can be done in that time And I recall that when I was their age I knew the fascination of running water, too."

Kathleen glanced up at him in surprise, as if the last thing she could imagine was his immaculate person ever in the slightest danger of being despoiled by a muddy stream, but he smiled down at her with amusement, as if yet again he read her thoughts.

"You do not believe that?" he said. "You do not believe that I was ever really young?"

"I—" The colour rose to her clear skin in a lovely tide, and he refused to turn away his eyes. "I am sure you were never quite like Jerry and Joe."

"Heaven forbid!" he murmured. "My parents would have found some means of disposing of me if I had resembled them at all closely. But I managed to enjoy myself just the same, and always I have thought that

Life is good. Nowadays I am inclined to think that it is very good!"

No wonder, she thought, a little wistfully. With all his possessions, his looks, his charm, his confidence in the future. For him Life must hold everything!

"No, not quite everything," he said, very softly, startling her with his uncanny reading of her mind. "There is much in store—I hope! Very much more in store! The most important thing of all, although I'll confess I didn't always recognise its importance!"

She glanced up at him again with wide, enquiring eyes, and he kept his hand below her elbow, guiding her along the well-worn path, making certain that she didn't stub her toes on a jagged piece of stone, or a tree root. Her golden hair swung in the sunshine that trickled through the leaves, her slim figure was that of a slim pink dryad; the delicate scent she used, nothing more than a very English toilet water, stole up to him.

"Tell me," he asked, very quietly, "have you ever been remotely near to falling in love, Miss O'Farrel?"

Her heart started to thump.

"Never," she answered at last, as if, nevertheless, she had had to give the matter some consideration.

"You are too young, you think?"

"I am twenty-three," she told him. "Many girls," she added, "are married at that age."

"It is a woman's age," he admitted, "a delightful age. In Portugal, I would say, most young women are married at that age. If not, they begin to feel anxious lest they are left, as you would say, 'on the shelf."

She laughed rather ruefully, overwhelmingly aware of his warm fingers gripping her elbow.

"Are you suggesting that I'm in a certain amount of danger, too?"

"Never," he answered. "There is no danger that you will be left on the shelf. For one thing you are English, and therefore you appear younger; and for another—" There was a second's pause. "One day you will fall in love!" he said.

She quivered slightly.

"Perhaps," she said feebly.

"There is no 'perhaps' about it! With your eyes, and the warm feeling that you cannot disguise even for those impossible twins down there on the edge of the stream . . . and your mouth, which is a very lovely mouth!" His eyes were on it, but she didn't dare to turn her own eyes up to his and discover this fact for herself. "And several other things about you, I don't hesitate to predict that one day you will fall very violently in love! Perhaps not in a very English way!"

"Meaning that the English are not as good at falling in love as the Portuguese?"

"I know one English girl who could be—I think! And I know one Portuguese who lost his heart some little while ago!"

"Yours, senhor?" she enquired, trying, but failing, to speak absolutely lightly.

"Yes, mine." He warned her against a sudden depression in the track, and then caught back a trailing bramble so that it wouldn't fasten its thorns in her dress. "My heart is irrecoverably lost, and one day soon I hope that my bachelor days will be over. Then I shall really begin to live!"

Kathleen felt as if the twitter of birdsong around them died, and the golden trickles of sunshine finding their way through the branches suddenly ceased to have any warmth. Even the little patches of blue sky that she could see between the leaves paled so that the day might have been grey instead of triumphantly blue and gold.

"You—you mean that you are planning to marry?" she asked, stumbling over the depression, and having to be politely assisted by him up the other side.

"As I said—one day! When one is as much in love as I am one naturally hopes it will be soon!"

The children came running towards them, and although they were a little mud-stained and wet, they also looked supremely happy, and in their grubby hands they each

clutched a few flowers.

"For you, Kathie!" Jerry said, and thrust them at her, and Joe also insisted upon her relieving him of his spoils.

"You do like them, don't you, Kathie?" he demanded, and the Conde allowed one of his sleek dark eyebrows to rise a little.

"Since when have you been calling Miss O'Farrel Kathie?" he asked. "And who gave you permission?" Jerry looked at him obliquely.

"No one," he admitted. "But her sister and her brother call her Kathie, and anyway it's her name. Kathleen—it's written in one of her books!"

The Conde smiled a little peculiarly, and pinched his ear.

"So you really are beginning to read! . . . Well, that much we owe to Kathleen! Or am I, too, permitted to make it Kathie?" glancing into the rather rigidly down-bent face of the girl.

"Perhaps it would be as well if you stuck to Miss O'Farrel," she answered a little hastily, and as his eyebrow ascended again bent and brought her own handkerchief to the task of cleansing his grubbiest nephew's face.

CHAPTER EIGHT

WHEN they got back to the quinta Dona Inez was awaiting them in the hall.

She looked a little surprised at the sight of her family being off-loaded from her brother's car, and seemed still more surprised at the sight of Kathleen, who had quite obviously accompanied them.

"I was given to understand that the children had gone for a drive," she said. "But I wasn't certain with whom. I thought it possible someone had called and taken them out, or that Miss O'Farrel had been given permission to use one of the cars."

"Instead of which you make the discovery that I have been devoting a morning to my nephews," the Conde returned rather drily.

She looked at him with an enigmatic gleam in her eyes.

"And Miss O'Farrel has been helping to make the burden a little lighter!"

"Considerably lighter," he agreed. "I couldn't have coped without her."

Dona Inez, in heavy white silk and a lot of fine gold bracelets that jingled on her wrists, studied the grimy appearance of her sons.

"It would seem that they have been running wild," she remarked, but there was no actual criticism in her tone as she glanced at Kathleen. "I would never have believed that you would endanger the immaculate interior of your car by allowing two such bedraggled specimens to enter it, Miguel," she observed, the gleam in her glorious eyes becoming a spark of definitely quizzical humour.

Then she offered a hand to one of the boys, and turned to lead him up the steps.

"By the way, it was a pity you chose this morning to remember your duty as an uncle, Miguel, for we had two unexpected visitors. Carmelita and her aunt are back,

and they were most disappointed not to find you here! Carmelita was almost distressed!"

Miguel came to a halt at the foot of the steps, and threw back his head.

"Carmelita? But she was not expected back for another week!" His whole expression changed. It grew animated —really animated—for the first time since Kathleen had known him, and even his voice warmed, although it was acutely disappointed at the same time. "But that is most unfortunate! Naturally I wished to be here when Carmelita paid her first call, but naturally also I expected to be given ample warning that she had returned!"

"Naturally," his sister agreed, with a soft, amused note in her voice, and a half-indulgent narrowing of the eyes. "However, it is not quite a disaster for we are to dine with them tonight, and Carmelita is so much looking forward to seeing you that she begged me tell you she will be counting not the hours, but the minutes!"

She looked meaningly into her brother's eyes, and although he smiled slightly as if he understood the reason why she did so, after a second or so the smile vanished, and he stood very still.

"Tonight?" he echoed, and Kathleen felt sure he was savouring the thought of the evening ahead of him. "That will be very pleasant!" Then he turned casually to Kathleen. "I hope you will not be tempted, since you will be dining alone, to have a meal on a tray in your room, Miss O'Farrel. That sort of thing is not approved of in this house."

Inez enquired:

"When did Miss O'Farrel have a meal on a tray in her room?"

"The first night she was here," he answered. Inez lifted her shoulders.

"I don't suppose it did her very much harm, and possibly she is used to having meals on trays." But she sent her brother a long look. "However, the important thing now is to clean up these children for lunch."

At the Day Nursery door she handed them over to Kathleen.

"I'm sure you will enjoy making the acquaintance of Carmelita," she remarked. "She is a great friend of ours, and during the next few weeks will almost certainly be coming very often to this house."

"Will she?" Kathleen murmured, wondering why the other was favouring her, too, with a very direct look. Inez nodded.

"She is not a beauty, but one of those placidly lovely young women who, once they had laid a gentle hand on a man's heart, decline to let go. Do you know what I mean?"

Kathleen didn't, and she looked a little bewildered. Inez explained.

"The heart is held firmly forever, despite the gentleness of the clasp! The man would not wish it otherwise!"

The following afternoon Kathleen was crossing the hall when the Conde emerged from his library and spoke to her.

"I was wondering whether you would like to visit your sister this afternoon?" he suggested. "A car can be ready for you at once if you would care for a break. And perhaps you would express to your sister the pleasure it would give us if she and her husband would dine with us here at the quinta tomorrow night? I am aware that it is somewhat short notice, but we are having a little party, and if Senhor and Senhora O'Farrel would consent to swell our numbers it would add greatly to the success of the evening."

It was gracefully put — even persuasively put — but Kathleen stared at him, as if for the moment she wasn't certain of the reply she ought to make. She could only think that Dona Inez would hardly be likely to share his views. An employee's relatives could hardly contribute to the success of any evening presided over by Dona Inez!

But at last she heard herself say:

"It is very kind of you, senhor

"The kindness will lie in the acceptance of my invitation." He smiled at her. "And nowhere else."

Peggy shared Kathleen's views when the invitation was extended to her, and she immediately decided that they couldn't possibly accept it because she hadn't anything fit to wear.

"Not really fit to wear." She pushed back the hair from her flushed brow. She was making cakes in the tiny kitchen, and although the windows were wide the atmosphere of the small enclosed space was definitely a little unbearable. "And even if we could afford it there isn't time to buy anything new."

Kathleen helped herself to a feathery-light cake from the wire tray, and perched on the edge of the kitchen-table. Already she was feeling more relaxed in this humbler atmosphere, and despite the warmth she was happy to have escaped for a few hours. It wasn't that she was unable to appreciate the beauties and magnificence of the quinfa—on the contrary, she appreciated very keenly the luxury of her surroundings—but there was always the feeling that there was an unbridgeable gulf between herself and her employers. And since the Conde had confessed to her that he was planning to marry soon the gulf had seemed to widen, and she was unhappily certain that in the event of his marriage taking place before Jerry and Joe were ready for school (or the services of an English governess were found to be unnecessary) she would find it quite impossible to remain there.

Just now she wasn't thinking very much about the depleted condition of Peggy's wardrobe, she was thinking about something else. She finished her cake, dusted the crumbs from her fingers and the front of her dress, and then asked as if the matter was not of any very great importance and she was merely suffering from a mild form of curiosity:

"Who is Carmelita Albrantes, Peggy? And have you ever met her?"

Peggy frowned a little. She was mentally trying to decide which of two evening-dresses she possessed—a dull gold taffeta or a somewhat outmoded black net — would make her look less like a rather hard-up English

artits's wife if she did decide they ought to accept the invitation to the Quinta Cereus.

"Carmelita Albrantes?" She knitted her brows, finally dismissing the black because it was at least three years old. "The Albtantes family is remotely connected to the de Chaves family, and their estates run side by side in this corner of Portugal. Papa Albrantes died about six months ago, and Carmelita, who is the only daughter—in fact, I think, she's the heiress to the estates—has been staying with a relative in Lisbon. I've never met her, but I was once presented to her mother who, like Dona Inez, likes to be thought of as a kind of semi-invalid. That's to say, she doesn't mix very much even with her own set, and I think poor Carmelita would have rather a thin time but for this aunt, who takes her about and chaperones her, and so forth."

"And she's very attractive?"

"Who? The aunt, or Carmelita?" Peggy rushed to the oven to rescue a batch of cakes that were beginning to burn. "Rumour has it that she's quite passable—Carmelita, I mean—and some say that the Conde plans to marry her one day. I wouldn't know, because I'm not in on these family matrimonial counsels."

"You mean that if it takes place it will be one of those arranged marriages? The kind of thing they have in Portugal?"

"Again I wouldn't know. But a lot of marriages in Portugal are arranged, especially when the families are important ones. Often the parents fix everything up when the victims are quite small, and sometimes it's a question of linking estates, or boosting failing fortunes. The Conde's fortunes are quite secure, so if he plans to marry Carmelita I'd say it's simply and solely because he wants to, or just possibly because he thinks she'll make a suitable wife. That again is important; a wife who knows how to conduct herself, and will be the right sort of mother for sons. And you can bet your life the Conde will want a son one day!"

Kathleen was aware of a curious feeling of revulsion —almost of actual nausea—at the thought of Miguel de

Chaves, with his brilliant good looks, marrying for the purpose of producing sons.

"Why?" Peggy looked up at her suddenly. "Why all this sudden interest in the domestic affairs of your em-employer? And, if it comes to that, why should your employer suddenly decide to invite us to the quinta?"

Kathleen was certain it was because the Conde had overheard Shane's criticism of the way she was being treated, and he wanted to make her feel more at home, and she heard herself saying: "Why shouldn't he? He met you once, and he told me he thought you were very charming—an opinion, I believe, you also formed of him! So why shouldn't he invite you to the quinta, and why shouldn't you accept?"

"Because, as I've explained to you, I haven't anything suitable to wear," Peggy replied dispiritedly. But she was obviously intrigued by the Conde's admission that he thought her charming. "Did he really say that about me?" she asked. "Or are you making it up?"

"I am not making it up," Kathleen assured her.

"Then you do have conversations sometimes? You are not as stiff with one another as you were?"

"We have conversations—sometimes," Kathleen admitted, and was annoyed because she could feel the uncontrollable colour rising to her cheeks. "We have also agreed to bury the hatchet for the time being, and he is satisfied with the way in which I am handling the twins. He took all three of us for a short drive the other morning, and bought us ice-cream in Amara. And had one himself!"

"What!" Peggy looked as unbelieving as if she had been informed that a maiden aunt had been seen dancing the tango. "You mean that he actually consumed ice-cream in public—under one of those café umbrellas!—with a couple of small boys and a nursery-governess, and no one else to protect him from the three of you?"

"There were only the four of us," Kathleen said, dimpling suddenly and rather deliciously, as if her sister-in-law's astonishment aroused in her a rather pleasurable sensation of humour. "Although I must admit it wasn't

under a cafe umbrella that we consumed the ices, but in a highly reputable hotel — Amara's leading hotel I believe it is! But to offset that the Conde wasn't in the least upset when Jerry let a large lump of ice-cream fall off his spoon, and land on his knee. He even offered his own handkerchief for the cleaning-up operations!"

"We-e-ll!" Peggy exclaimed, and was still staring at Kathleen as if she had never really seen her before when Shane came in sniffing hungrily at the air, and she had to break off her absorbed inspection in order to prevent him carrying away to his studio a whole plateful of cakes.

"But I'm working," he protested, "and I'm hungry!"

Gently but firmly she removed the plate from him.

"Listen, Shane! We're invited to dinner at the Quints Cereus! That is to say, you and I are invited. Naturally, Kathleen will be there. But I haven't a thing to wear. . Not a thing! What are we going to do about it?"

"Nothing," Shane replied, with masculine calm. "For one thing I have no particular desire to dine at the quinta—I've survived all this time without seeing the inside of it!—and new dresses are out just now. I require new shirts!"

"Your shirts can wait." Peggy gripped his arm. "Listen, darling, I've decided that we simply must accept this invitation, and that being so I've got to have a new dress! Got to, because we can't let Kathleen down! So will you drive me into Lisbon tomorrow morning, and I'll try and pick up something reasonably cheap?"

Shane looked definitely perplexed.

"I simply can't see the necessity. . . ."

Peggy's grip on his arm hurt like a lobster's tenacious tentacles, or, rather, claws.

"You can't, darling," his wife said softly, "because you're only a man. But I can! . . . Now, leave it to me! Perhaps after all a certain amount of extravagance will be justifiable for once, so I take back the bit about looking for something reasonably cheap!"

Kathleen gazed at her in the same sort of perplexity as her brother.

CHAPTER NINE

KATHLEEN had always been very proud of Shane, particularly in the days before he grew his little golden beard. But on the night of the Conde's dinner-party she thought he looked like a handsome Viking, with his tanned skin and dark blue eyes, and in his well-pressed dinner jacket. Really, Peggy had turned him out very well, and his linen was as pristine in its whiteness as the Conde's.

Peggy had been successful on her shopping expedition to Lisbon, and in addition to a new pearl-grey brocade dress that was just right for a young and blooming matron, she wore pearl-grey satin sandals and had her mother's real pearls round her neck. It was a very shapely neck, and the pearls were good, and Peggy's soigné darkness, that she also owed to the distaff side of her family, was far removed from the somewhat heavy darkness of several of the Portuguese women who were also the Conde's guests that night.

In fact, apart from Dona Inez and Carmelita Albrantes —and Kathleen—the women present were hardly a handsome selection, Peggy decided.

Kathleen was like a bright flower in the midst of cloudy darkness. Her dress was scarlet-flowered cream silk, with a scarlet velvet ribbon looped through the skirt. She looked young and delectable, clear-eyed and clear skinned—the sort of milk-an-roses skin only a young English girl of her age would be likely to possess—and by contrast with Senhorita Albrantes she was as vivid as a poppy in a cornfield. The gentle Carmelita—and Inez had inferred that she was very gentle—had distinctive pale hair that set her apart from her countrywomen, but her eyes were the mournful brown of a doe on a mountainside. Her complexion was slightly sallow, and her mouth drooped a little, but was very full and soft and red as a cherry. She was tall and graceful, and her black

lace dress had probably cost a great deal of money, but black didn't altogether become her.

Kathleen thought she might be a little difficult to dress, with that flax-pale hair and unhealthily-toned skin. And then was conscious of relief, because she really wasn't a beauty, although there was something about her that was undoubtedly appealing. Her eyes when she met those of her host flattered and invited and besought all at the same time, but she was quite skilful at lowering her lashes when admiration flashed into his.

And, there was no doubt about it, Miguel de Chaves admired Carmelite Alinantes. To what extent a mere observer would have been unable to tell, but when he put a glass of sherry into her hand before dinner he did so as if that hand was made of porcelain, and he was plainly solicitous about her comfort. The chair in which she had seated herself was straight-backed and antique, and although it enabled her to pose gracefully it was a little hard on her slim shoulders. The Conde placed a velvet cushion between them and the hard wood, and she thanked him with a doe-eyed smile.

Kathleen, on the other hand, he scarcely noticed during the early part of the evening. To Peggy he made himself charming, and Dona Inez went out of her way to be charming to Shane. It occurred to Kathleen that his virile good looks probably appealed to her.

In the huge sala before dinner the scene was one of glitter and surpassing elegance, which in the dining-room had much more of positive sumptuousness. Kathleen knew without looking at her that Peggy's eyes grew round with appreciation when she saw the long table, ablaze from end to end with priceless glass and silver and flowers of peerless perfection; but they grew even rounder when she was able to take in the splendour of the room's appointments.

For a 'summer villa'—and that was how the Conde looked upon the quima — it was wonderfully luxurious, and the evidences of wealth were just a shade depressing to one who had sacrificed her husband's need for shirts to the beauties of a pearl-grey evening-dress. The only

comforting thought Peggy had was that if they were invited again the dress would prove its value.

She looked along the table at her sister-in-law and felt her heart warm because she was so young and fresh and appealing. And then she looked into the dark, devastatingly handsome face of her host, who had placed her surprisingly near to him at the table; in fact, she had the honour of sitting at his left hand, while Senhorita Albrantes sat at his right, and wondered why she and Shane had been invited at all.

For a year they had lived in Amara, and this was the first time they had been guests inside the quinta. Was it anything to do with gratitude because she had provided him with a governess for his troublesome nephews? Or was it because he wanted Kathleen to feel that her social status was not so low that her relatives were permanently excluded from all social functions?

Or was it something else to do with Kathleen?

The Conde met her eyes, and as if he realised she was being vexed by an unanswerable question he smiled and lifted his glass. It was glowing with one of the finest wines of Portugal, and above it his eyes were deep and dark and faintly mystical.

"To our better acquaintance, Senhora O'Farrell" he said. "You and your husband must visit us often!"

Farther down the table Shane also felt perplexed, but when he saw that smiling look in the Conde's eyes as they met his wife's he began to feel a little uneasy as well. Op-

le him Kathleen was toying with the rich food on her plate, and as if she was a magnet who drew her gaze her eyes went constantly to Carmelita Albrantes. Carmelita—who was sitting on the right hand of the host! The place of honour!

Already Kathleen seemed slightly changed to him. She was not as relaxed, as cool, as carelessly poised as when she first arrived in Portugal. There was a slight tenseness round her mouth, and every time her look shifted from Carmelita to the man who paid her a salary to look after his nephews the awareness in her watchful eyes was not merely of her surroundings. She was not altogether happy

about the bond she had established between the Conde and Carmelita. So much Shane was certain about.

And then he felt a sharp prick of anxiety. Kathie was one of the most sensible girls he had ever known, and she would never even for a moment begin to think of the Conde as anything other than employer. Or would she? The anxiety persisted. Peggy was always teasing her about falling in love—about waiting for 'Mr. Right'. But 'Mr. Right' and Miguel de Chaves could never be incorporated in the same person for Kathie. For one thing, it was rather more than an unfounded rumour that he was going to marry Carmelita.

After dinner Kathleen was conscious of as much relief as her brother when they returned to the sala, and coffee was handed round. Somehow these Portuguese meals seemed to spread themselves out interminably, particularly when there were guests. And although it had been pleasant having Shane and Peggy at the same table with her, it had also been for some reason a good deal of a strain. Perhaps it was the awareness that she and her relatives were not of the same social status as the Conde and his sister and the majority of their guests.

Looking at Carmelita Albrantes, and recognising her confidence and her faint air of being perfectly assured that she really was the most important guest—the most welcome guest—in spite of the slight insipidity of her appearance, Kathleen didn't want to be patronized by her employer. She didn't want favours bestowed on her, and her relatives invited just because she was proving herself much more useful than had been anticipated at the outset; and as the Conde continued to take very little notice of her she would have liked to slip away up to her room and take Peggy with her and persuade her and Shane to leave early.

Not that Shane, she thought, would need very much persuasion. He was never happy in a dinner jacket, and she was certain he was rebelling against the slight constriction imposed by a stiff white collar and a bow-tie, and the charms of Dona Inez were hardly likely to impress him. But Peggy looked perfectly happy as the deli-

cate porcelain cups of coffee circulated, and the atmosphere grew even more opulent with the scent of expensive cigars and specially blended cigarettes, and the French perfume of some of the ladies. Kathleen could feel her settling down to really enjoy the conversation she was having with an elderly dowager who couldn't think why they hadn't met before, and was likely to suggest further meetings before the evening ended.

For Peggy had to live in Amara, and she was a social soul. She would enjoy being invited out.

Carmelita returned to her straight-backed chair, and the host established himself just behind it, where he could talk to her across a very white shoulder and watch the diamond ear-rings flashing in her small, delicate ears. She certainly had a very delicate bone structure, and her mouth was undeniably lovely. Kathleen, watching from a seat near one of the several tall windows, had to admit that it was first and foremost a seductive mouth, and that when Carmelita was animated the pathetic droop vanished. She was animated tonight, and especially so when her brown eyes encountered Miguel's. When he lighted a cigarette for her she seemed to seize the opportunity to gaze right into his eyes. When his hand accidentally touched hers Kathleen knew she didn't really regard it as an accident.

And very likely it wasn't. Very likely he was trying to think up an excuse that would enable them to be alone together: after about half an hour they disappeared together into the deepening dusk of the garden.

Kathleen stood up the moment they left the room, and slipped upstairs to the Night Nursery to make certain her two charges were sleeping soundly. They were, the nightlight between their beds burning away gently, and there was not the smallest excuse for her to linger. Nevertheless, she stayed, feeling happier with the two small sleeping figures than she did downstairs in the magnificent sala, where any conversation that was addressed to her was of a purely polite order (or so she imagined).

After a time she began to be afraid that her presence might wake the children, so she went along to her own

room and, still with the idea of delaying her return downstairs, combed her hair and lightly powdered her nose. She was moving along the corridor which led to Dona Inez's apartments, and which would take her back to the head of the main staircase, when a figure emerged from a door at the end—Dona Inez's sitting-room door —and put a finger to his lips.

Kathleen was so surprised that she thought at first she was imagining things. Then Fernando Queiroz moved softly towards her.

"Senhorita," he said, in a compelling whisper. "Senhorita!"

She stood and waited for him to come close to her, and her eyes were wide with the astonishment she felt.

"Senhorita O'Farrell" He put a finger to his lips, in the same way and for the same reason that Jerry had done once before. "It is lucky for me that it is you and no one else! Maria swore you were all downstairs in the soda, but one cannot trust these maids. And Inez has already kept me waiting far longer than she promised not to do!" He glanced at his watch in the dim light of the corridor. "A full half hour! Surely she could have slipped away from the interminable coffee-drinking before this?"

"You mean—" Kathleen was afraid she gaped at him—"you mean that you are up here waiting for Dona Inez?"

"Why, of course!" She thought his eyes twinkled with confident audacity. "For whom else would I be waiting in Inez's own sitting-room? Although it is true that I also hoped I might catch a glimpse of you, too!"

Kathleen thought of the girl his friends expected him to marry, and a gust of pity swept over her.

"I think I understand why you were not invited to dinner," she said.

"I am very frequently invited to dinner, but tonight I was excluded—quite pointedly excluded! Inez made up for it by suggesting we should have a quiet talk in her room, and I can't really think why you should look at me in that big-eyed, reproachful way. They are extra-

ordinarily lovely eyes"—his voice softening into a caress

—"and their blueness makes me think of twin blue lakes.

But the coldness in your voice seems a little unmerited."

He moved even closer to her.

"I meant it when I said that I hoped I would see you, beautiful Irish Kathleen! You are Irish, aren't you?" She backed away from him.

"My father was Irish." The eyes he described as twin blue lakes regarded him with revulsion, however. "Have you forgotten that you are practically engaged to be married, Senhor Queiroz?"

He made a slight gesture with his hands and shoulders.

"In Portugal everyone is engaged to be married who has passed beyond the stage of adolescence," he told her, "and is not already married! These things are arranged in our cradles, as you probably know. For reasons —usually of finance!—we fall in with the arrangement, but the heart is something no one can school or order to incline itself in a certain direction! And my heart leapt quite violently in my breast when I first set eyes on you, and the smallest encouragement would result in it leaping right out of my breast and landing on the carpet at your feet!"

His audacious dark brown eyes merely aroused in her an increased feeling of revulsion and dislike, and she turned as if to retreat along the corridor, but he put out a hand and strongly grasped her wrist.

"No, no, don't go! Don't leave me up here to grow bored and infuriated waiting for Inez! She is the loveliest thing in widows I've ever met, but as I've already observed, there are other lovely young women in the world!"

He bent as if he was actually going to attempt to kiss her, but she resisted him so determinedly that he had to abandon the intention. Nevertheless, he laughed, softly and with amusement, as she struggled unsuccessfully to free her arm, and as footsteps sounded at the end of the corridor he altered his tactics and captured her free hand„ carrying it up to his lips.

"Such little white fingers!" he said, gently, and to the onlooker he was merely overcome by a desire to offer homage—and as Portuguese men do not normally kiss the hand of an unmarried girl, and Fernando Queiroz had a reputation for seeking rather than offering anything, the moment was one of sufficient unusualness to halt the approaching footsteps for a bare half second. And then they came on.

"What are you doing here, Fernando?" demanded the Conde, his face dark with a strange, black kind of rage.

Fernando looked guilty.

"Must I really offer an explanation . . .?" and he glanced at Kathleen as if loath to involve her more than she was already, if somehow or other he could spare her.

Miguel didn't merely bite his lower lip, he seemed to tear at it. His displeasure was like an icy draught in the corridor, and Kathleen stood appalled. Surely he didn't think .?

But he avoided even turning his eyes in her direction, and all at once the mantle of his usual calm, cool and disdainful aloofness dropped on him again, and he said with nothing more than a note of distaste in his voice:

"Not since the explanation is so very obvious! But as my sister's apartments are in this corridor, Queiroz, and it is possible she may be on her way up to them at any moment, I would recommend that you remove yourself without delay. And you, Miss O'Farrel—" persistently avoiding looking at her, while his handsome face had much in common with austere museum marbles—"unless you have a particular wish to say goodnight to your brother and sister-in-law I think you might retire to your room."

For one moment Kathleen felt angry.

"Of course I would like to say goodnight—" she began. Then a sudden, strange sense of futility rushed over her—of inevitability—followed by a sensation of flatness and meekness.

"Although, if you would be good enough to do so for me, there is no real reason why I should go downstairs again," she said in a colourless voice.

The Conde bowed very slightly.

"Of course I will convey your goodnights!"

Fernando's eyes were watching her with a kind of mournful regret, and she knew this and was secretly furious with him. If only she dared say outright what he was doing in the corridor! But would the Conde even pretend to believe her when it was his sister who was involved?

"And tomorrow morning I would like to have a word with you--early, miss O'Farrell" Her employer's voice was clipped and icy. "As soon after breakfast as you can make it convenient. . . . That is to say, get someone to take over the temporary charge of the children! In the library," he added.

"Very well, senhor!"

But as she turned away and left the two men she felt so humiliated that she wondered whether it would be a good plan to walk out that night. Slip down now and join Peggy and Shane, and say she was going home with them!

Then she decided that that would clear up nothing. And in the morning she would clear up something! She wouldn't let the despicable Fernando Queiroz get away with it altogether . . . or, for that matter, Dona Inez, who, as a widow and a mother, should have known better than to encourage him!

CHAPTER TEN

BUT the first thing she received in the morning, even before the arrival of her breakfast-tray, was a note from Dona Inez which made her realise that the Portuguese woman was far more capable of protecting her interests than she was herself.

The note said simply, in beautifully-penned English characters:

"I have had word with my brother on the subject of you and Fernando, and I have tried to make him understand that you are very young, and therefore impressionable! Fernando should not have arranged to meet you after dinner, but young people do things that we staider creatures would never dream of, and I do not forget that Senhor Queiroz was only a school-boy when I married!

Be a little more discreet in your meetings in future, and if possible avoid my sitting-room!"

Kathleen went through the morning routine of bathing and dressing with her hands shaking with anger, and her breakfast-tray was left practically untouched. When she joined the children, who were always given their breakfast by Maria, she was in no mood to cope with their wildly high spirits, and all she could think was that the ground had been wiped from beneath her feet, and the clever Inez had chosen the safest way out to protect herself.

Certainly her brother, reading that note, would never believe it was part of a subterfuge.

", .. I have tried to make him understand that you are very young, and therefore impressionable!"

Kathleen felt her anger die, and a feeling of unreasonable depression take possession of her. She was being implicated in rather a mean little affair that to Fernando meant nothing, for, as he had admitted,

there were many lovely women in the world, and apparently he liked them all! It was possible that he appealed to Inez f ar more than Inez appealed to him, but that didn't excuse him, and it made of Inez a very unscrupulous woman. Not merely because she was willing to involve Kathleen, but because she knew that Fernando was practically betrothed to be married, and the inexperienced young girl who was in love with him had none of the weapons a more mature widow possessed. An extremely attractive widow, moreover, who made that particular young girl seem extra colourless!

Kathleen felt a little sick with helplessness, sympathy for the girl who, according to Inez, she was trying to rob, and the difficulty to really credit that the twins' mother could behave in such a way. Without any regard, apparently, for truth or other peoples' feelings!

As soon as she had helped Maria clear the nursery table, and had seen the twins settle down to amuse themselves with various favourite toys, she went downstairs to the library, and knocked on the heavily panelled door with the feeling that when it opened she would feel still more sick, and almost painfully apprehensive. But there was no response to her knock, and the door didn't open. She tapped a little more loudly the second time, and still more loudly the third time, but nothing happened. The Conde was quite plainly not in his library, and although she had imagined he would be waiting for her he obviously wasn't.

She went back upstairs to the nursery wing, not conscious of any relief because she had escaped being reprimanded for the time being, and aware instead of a rather leaden disappointment because the evil moment had had to be postponed. The twins were growing restless and demanding to be let out into the garden, and as it was a particularly beautiful morning Kathleen knew she couldn't keep them cooped up indefinitely. Besides, they were her responsibility and their health was important, so she took them down to the quiet corner of the grounds where they usually disported themselves at this hour of the day, and then learned

from Jerry that he had seen his uncle drive off in his car while she was on her way to the library.

Kathleen bit her lip. So he hadn't thought she was worth waiting for—even though, he had commanded her to attend him in the library!—and, as on another occasion, he had coolly broken an appointment he had made with her.

So much for the sort of opinion he had of her! A nursery-governess who flirted with his guests, and might really have to be dismissed before very long!

The morning seemed very long, and very hot, and just before lunch she sent the children in to have their hands and faces washed by Maria before being served with their nursery lunch. She had more or less made up her mind that she would skip lunch for herself that day and go and sit in her own room, when the Conde's car swung up the drive and came to rest on the broad sweep before the house just as she was crossing it.

Sitting beside the Conde was Carmelita Albrantes, somehow managing to look extremely cool and composed in black relieved only by very slight touches of white. The tiny collar at her rounded throat, for instance, slightly stiffened like a Medici collar so that it acted as a frame for her face, and her gloves were of white lace, and her parasol when she stepped from the car and unfurled it to protect the sallow skin from the midday heat had insets of white lace, also.

An elegant young woman, who would never fail to be correct whatever the circumstances! Kathleen wished heartily that she could have avoided bumping into her just now, when she had the Conde smiling at her as he never smiled at anyone else—in Kathleen's experience —and declining to let go of her arm once she had alighted on to the gravel because she, too, wore absurdly high heels and she might twist her delicate ankle if he released her too soon!

Kathleen felt the self-conscious colour sweep into her face as she tried to slip past them, and she hoped ardently that they would ignore her. But Portuguese

politeness made that a vain hope, and even Senhorita Albrantes condescended to send her a little nod.

"You are the children's governess, aren't you?" she said. "I hope they are well this morning?"

Her voice was cool and perfectly amiable, but it was the voice of one who knew she was addressing a paid employee—and therefore a menial!

Kathleen replied hurriedly that they were perfectly well, and she deliberately avoided looking at the Conde, who, however, addressed her in very precise tones.

"We shall see you at lunch, Miss O'Farrel?"

No apology for having failed to be in the library at the appointed hour that morning, and only a glacial interest in whether or not they would see her at lunch. For one moment she very nearly said that she was lunching with the twins, but she knew that was against the rules, and she had to admit feebly that they would see her at lunch.

She disappeared upstairs to tidy herself, and didn't enter the sala for the aperitifs that she knew would be being dispensed before the meal was served. Normally she had a grapefruit when she had to submit to these occasions, but today she waited for the gong to summon them to the dining-room before venturing to the head of the stairs.

Carmelita and the Conde were already in the dining-room, and the Conde was carefully seating his guest at the table. Kathleen managed to slip quietly into her own seat before he could perform the same service for her. Inez, plainly, wasn't planning to join them.

The meal was the usual well-served, rather long-drawn-out affair, but Kathleen wasn't conscious of what she ate. She knew that she refused several dishes—in fact, most of the dishes—and occasionally her employer's eyes dwelt on her with a kind of remote gray-lay in their depths. She didn't see them, for she seldom looked up, but she could feel them alighting on her bent head and her scarcely touched plate, and more than once she was certain he was about to address her when Carmelita said something that interfered with his

intention, and he had to give his attention to his guest.

They talked mostly in Portuguese throughout the meal, and that made it unnecessary for Kathleen even to appear interested in the conversation, which she was quite certain didn't concern her in any case. Carmelita was the one who introduced all the topics, and when the Conde became particularly interested her large eyes sparkled and her voice grew several degrees warmer. Kathleen had the feeling that not merely was she in the way, but that the Portuguese girl expected her to withdraw at the earliest possible moment; and she decided not to wait for the dessert and the coffee, which was always brought to table at lunch time, but requested to be excused.

"But of course we will excuse you," Carmelita said, as if she was already mistress of the quinta. And the relief in her face was quite unmistakable.

The Conde stood up.

"You have made a poor lunch, Miss O'Farrel," he protested, his dark eyebrows meeting in a frown.

"I have had all I want, thank you!" she returned, and fled from the room before he could say anything further.

She had been terrified lest he would remind her that he had yet to have his talk with her in the library, and if he had done so in front of Carmelita, thus letting the Portuguese girl know that she was in disgrace for some reason, she didn't think she could have borne it. That would have been an humiliation that made her cheeks grow hot even as she ascended the stairs and let her mind dwell on it, in spite of the fact that it was an humiliation she had escaped.

But having settled the twins for their afternoon nap she went down again into the garden, to the, quiet corner where she knew she was unlikely to be disturbed. Maria had offered to give the children their fruit juice when they awakened, and because she had a headache she had accepted this gratefully. The dull ache behind her eyes was due to the anxiety she had felt all morning and the secret uneasiness that gnawed

at her, and the society of the twins could be a little exhausting under such circumstances. To be relieved of the task of looking after them for a whole hour, and that in the heat of the day, was something that made her feel exceedingly grateful to Maria.

The talk with her employer would have to come, she knew, and until she was finally sent for her anxiety was hardly likely to decrease.

But suddenly, as she sat there in the cool of the garden, with masses of colourful growth around her, a tree spreading protecting branches above her head, and a fountain tinkling musically in a tiled basin near to her, her agitation died. And in its place she was conscious of a righteous resentment that rose up from the core of her, and filled her whole being.

What right had Dona Inez to implicate her, and what right had the Conde to say he wanted to see her at a certain hour, and then either forget about it altogether or change his mind about the necessity for doing so? His indifferent attitude at lunch, and the fact that he had practically ignored her, had seemed to indicate clearly that he was not prepared to waste very much of his time on her, and she could understand that when Carmelita was practically clinging to his side. Hadn't he admitted that he hoped to marry soon and that his heart was irrecoverably lost, so naturally time spent with Carmelita was valuable time, and irksome people like nursery-governesses who were not even looking after his own children were outside his more important thoughts!

But that didn't make it any easier for the nursery-governess, and Kathleen had the right to expect an employer to abide by a decision he had taken. He had said he wanted to see her after breakfast; instead of which he had gone off and spent the morning with Carmelita, and then brought her back to lunch, and Kathleen was no nearer to knowing what sort of attitude would be adopted towards her in future!

She stood up, suddenly too incensed even to sit still, and the dull throbbing in her head made her look

a trifle white. She had heard the noise of a car gliding away from the front of the house fully ten minutes before and realised that the Conde had once more left the quinta behind him to return his luncheon guest to her home, which meant she would not be called upon to give an account of her behaviour the night before for some time yet. But instead of being relieved by the temporary reprieve she was overwhelmingly aware of a hopeless feeling of frustration, and as she turned towards the house this lent her a blind, defeated look.

"I thought I might find you here, Miss O'Farrel," the Conde said, and she looked almost violently startled as he appeared suddenly in front of her. "I have just been upstairs to the nurseries, and Maria told me you were in the garden. This, I believe, is one of your favourite corners of it, so it was here I came to look for you!"

Kathleen felt the startled pink colour drive away the pallor from her face. Her eyes, however, continued to have that rather dazed look in them.

"Have you been unwisely sitting in the sun?" Miguel de Chaves wanted to know rather sharply. "At lunch you obviously had little appetite, and when I came upon you just now you were as white as a sheet! What is wrong?"

Kathleen felt indignation bubble up in her. "Nothing is wrong," she answered, coldly. "There is absolutely nothing wrong with me, senhor!"

He frowned as he studied her, and then he drew her into the shade and told her to sit down on the garden seat where she had been sitting before.

"I thought you appointed the library as a suitable place for demanding an explanation of last night," she said.

His frown grew noticeably.

"I must apologise for not being in the library at the appointed time this morning, but an urgent telephone call took me away from the house."

Carmelita, she thought, the most irrational resentment seeping into every fibre of her being. Carmelita

dying to see you, and unable to wait! . . . And, of course, you were unable to wait to see her!

"In any case," the man said quietly, "there was no question of demanding an explanation. What I saw last night didn't require very much explanation, and my sister has thrown a certain amount of light on the incident since. What I would have done this morning, if I hadn't been called away, was warn you for the second time against a young man who has never been known to be serious about any young woman, and suggest that you behaved more circumspectly towards him in future! But having thought the matter over I wasn't going to raise the subject at all."

"You are kind, senhor," she told him, feeling as if indignation would choke her, "very kind!"

"And you," he said, "are very young!"

"So young," she returned, a little wildly, "that I don't honestly feel you can have sufficient confidence in me to continue to entrust me with the care of your nephews! And from my point of view I would far rather be relieved of their care, and allowed to go home to England! If you'll remember, senhor, this was to be only a temporary arrangement!"

Looking up at him she saw his eyes grow strangely dark.

"If you'll remember, senhorita, you gave me your promise to take charge of my nephews until they were ready to go to school!"

"Yes, but—" She looked away and bit hard at her lower lip. "I think things are different now!"

"Because an impressionable young man kissed your hand last night?"

"Because you believe that I arranged to meet him where I—where I did meet him!.. .

He looked down at the green turf on which he was standing, and for an instant his expression was quite inexplicable to her. Then he said with an odd touch of gravity:

"I suggest that we say no more about last night! My sister has interceded on your behalf, and after all

you were not guilty of a crime. You are— as I think we are all agreed!—young, and possibly young Queiroz has a way with women which is hard to resist," rather drily. "Even Inez put in a special plea for him, otherwise I would forbid him the house."

But this was too much for Kathleen; that she should be linked with a casual young man like Fernando was bad enough, but that she should require the intervention of someone like Dona Inez to gain her a reluctant pardon from this autocratic Portuguese landowner was more than her Irish blood would stand.

"I don't think you need concern yourself with my youth, senhor," she said, standing up and facing him stiffly, "and neither do I expect you to make allowances because of it. Although you may find it difficult to believe, I am not so susceptible that I am likely to be swept off my feet by a hand-kissing young man and so far as I am concerned you can forbid him not merely the house but the entire area! It will make not the smallest difference to me!"

She thought that his lips set a little grimly.

"In England, perhaps, these little 'affairs' mean nothing very much? You are accustomed to what you call hand-kissing' young men, and have discovered the art of dealing with them?"

"Perhaps," she agreed, because she didn't greatly care what she said just then.

His eyes went very dark, and very cold.

"In that case there is nothing much more to be said, save that I would like to remind you that everyone expects Queiroz to marry a young girl to whom we are all very much attached, and if you are only amusing ourself will you please bear in mind that your idle interest in her future husband may cause that young girl a lot of heartache."

"I will bear it in mind, senhor," she said, and then turned away. "And now that you have decided to overlook my offence, may I go?"

He gazed at her with sudden perplexity — in fact, something that obviously troubled him more than mere perplexity.

"I do not understand you," he said. "To me you do not look like a young woman who—"

"Would steal away from a dinner-party in order to keep an assignation with a young man she hardly knew—? And in her employer's house!" she finished for him, suddenly turning cold blue eyes upon him. and gazing at him as if she thoroughly disliked him. "It does sound a bit tall, doesn't it? But you have put it all down to the fact that I am young?" She bit her lip angrily. "May I ask one question, senhor?"

"Of course," he answered, gravely.

"Just what did you say to my brother and sister-in-law last night? Did you make it clear to them that I was in temporary disgrace?"

"Naturally not." He sounded honestly shocked. "That is the very last thing I would have done!"

"Even though you were the one who 'caught me out'?" She didn't care if she sounded hard and vaguely insolent. She was still smarting under the injustice of not even being requested for anything in the nature of an explanation. Just because she was a governess, and young, it was accepted that she was weak and unreliable! "That was very forbearing of you, senhor! But I have never yet had to be reported on by an employer to my relatives, so perhaps it wasn't so forbearing after all!"

Because she was gazing straight at him she could see the look of surprise that swept into his handsome dark face, and it gave place to another look she found it hard to understand. For one instant she could have sworn that she had somehow got below his guard and injured him in some purely superficial way. She even thought that a tiny tinge of colour rose up under his olive skin.

"That rather sounds as if I was spying on you last night," he said, very quietly, "and as if I left the sala to find out precisely what you were doing upstairs.

Why you thought it necessary to remain away from my guests for some considerable while!"

"When I left the sala," she flashed back at him, "you had already left it! You couldn't have known when I decided to leave, because you were in the garden with Senhorita Albrantes!"

"So?" he said, and she was the one who suddenly coloured brilliantly.

"I—I saw you both—leave .

"And you were feeling a little bored at the time," with that sibilant softness he could adopt at times. "And that was the reason why you happened to be observing us?"

"I—I . she stammered again. "I wasn't

bored . . ."

"Then perhaps you felt a little neglected?"

"I had no right to feel neglected! ... And of course I wasn't!" she added hastily. "There was no question of neglect."

"And you knew that Fernando was waiting for you upstairs?"

"Fernando?" For an instant she was off her guard. "I had no idea I would run into Fernando." Once more she turned away. "May I go now? It isn't part of Maria's duties to look after the children, and they will have had their nap."

"Certainly you may go," he returned with a stillness in his voice that made it impossible for her to guess whether he had noticed her admission or not — and, what was more important, whether he believed it if he had noticed it. "But before you do so I should like to be assured that you are feeling perfectly well today?"

"I am perfectly well, senhor."

"And you don't find this climate trying? The heat, I mean?"

"On the contrary, I am beginning to be convinced that I shall miss it very much when I go home to England."

"At the moment you are in Portugal!"

"Yes, senhor."

Blue eyes and dark, queerly flecked grey ones stared at one another, and then as Kathleen lowered hers she felt her heart start to thump.

"And England is quite a long way away!"

"Yes; it was quite a long way away!" And the life she had led in England seemed farther away still!

"I venture to predict that we will keep you in Portugal," the Conde remarked composedly. "Like your sister and your brother you will stay here. You may even marry here!"

"I — I don't think I shall ever marry!" she said rather foolishly.

He smiled.

"I should say there is no question but that you will marry. A young woman like you will have to do so in order to justify her existence — and her attractiveness!"

She heard herself asking with an anxiety that horrified her when she thought about it afterwards, and quite without the volition of her will:

"When you marry, senhor—and you inferred that you might do so soon! — you will hardly be likely to keep your sister's children with you, and therefore you will not need to employ a governess. In that event — and of course I understand that I shall have to find another position then! — will you make the arrangements for Jerry and Joe's schooling?"

He continued to smile at her, his eyes a little amused, but his shapely mouth curiously softened.

"When I marry I don't anticipate making very much alteration in my household. My sister will probably live elsewhere, but I think she would prefer it if the boys stayed with me until I judge they are ready for school. That may not be for some little while yet, because of their early unbringing. And I feel sure they will like to have you near them. Therefore I shouldn't think too much about looking for another position, if I were you. There are always vacancies to be filled, and if you like Portugal why not consider staying here?"

Never, never, her heart cried — not once you are married to Carmelita Albrantesl

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THAT night, when the twins were safely In bed and asleep and she was alone in her own room, Kathleen took herself to task, and as a result of a thorough investigation of her mind and heart decided that she would be wise if she said good-bye to Portugal without delay.

If she stayed she would almost certainly reap the whirlwind later on, when unhappiness in a more or less solid form would literally hurl itself at her. She would know what it was to look bleakly into the future and discover that it was without any brightness whatsoever, and all because one man whom she had started off by describing not only to herself but to her relatives as arrogant and detestable had suddenly become indispensable to her. Which would be a quite ridiculous situation in any case, for when the motivating power of one's existence centres round a solitary human person then peace of mind is forever lost, whether the solitary human person is entirely out of reach or not. The calm complacency of her girlhood and young womanhood would be behind her, and she didn't want that to happen — somehow she had always shrunk from the thought of it happening to her.

When happiness was dependent on another human being it was a frightening thing, and it meant that she would no longer be in complete control of her own destiny. She had supposed vaguely that one day she would want to share her life with someone else — she would want to fall in love, and be loved — but she had been in no hurry to experience this curious state, that was unlike any other state of mind, heart, or being, according to everyone who knew anything about it.

Now she knew that those who had experienced the phenomena were right, and that the impact of suddenly finding out that, out of all the men in the world,

one man could make or mar one's future was shattering. And added to that the knowledge that there wasn't a hope in the world that that particular man could ever mean anyhing to one was rather worse than shattering. It filled her with dismay, which grew as she pondered the situation.

Of course, there was such a thing as smothering newly-born emotion, but hers wasn't so newly-born. It must have been gathering strength all the time, from the moment she felt herself catch back a faint gasp of admiration at the startling good looks of the Conde de Chaves, and wished that Peggy had warned her just what he looked like. Even when he made her angry with his cool disdain the admiration hadn't wavered for an instant, and subconsciously she knew that that was the reason she had allowed her sister-in-law to persuade her to stay on for another week, instead of returning home to England according to plan.

Another week—with the hope that before it ended she would catch another glimpse of the Conde? Was that really what she had secretly wished for?

She was certain now that it was, and she knew that her complete capitulation had come about when he had held her hand and told her that if she needed support any time in her dealings with the twins she could appeal to him.

The strength and vitality of his fingers had communicated itself to something deep inside her, and she had felt bemused by the odd sensation his nearness filled her with. The night when she had returned from her brother's and he had been waiting for her in the garden of the quinta an almost painful delight in his nearness when he stood close to her and lightly stirred her hair with his warm breath had frightened her when she thought about it afterwards.

Now she knew there wasn't much point in being frightened. The damage was done, and she had the uneasy conviction that it was incurable. Her ear was always vaguely listening for the sound of his footsteps,

in the house or on the flagged floor of the terrace which ran below her windows; when she crossed the hall and he called her name from the doorway of the library her heart leapt, and then behaved as if it was no longer secure in her breast. And when he was annoyed with her her heart died, and she felt desperate.

She had felt desperate today, particularly round about lunch time, when disappointment because he had obviously forgotten that he made an appointment to see her in the library had hung like a black cloud over her. And the sight of him driving up with Carmelita had been the final straw.

It was absurd her feeling jealous of Carmelita, for the Portuguese girl lived in an entirely different world, socially speaking, to the one she, Kathleen, inhabited, and she had every right to expect this arrogant Portuguese male to be attentive to her. Whether or not he was in love with her it would be impossible to say, but he certainly behaved as if he liked her enormously. And there had been that admission of his that he was in love!

If he wasn't in love with Carmelita, then with whom was he in love? There must be many attractive young women he knew in Lisbon, and Kathleen couldn't imagine any young woman singled out by him for attention not responding. Autocratic and demanding, perhaps sometimes a little unreasonable—particularly m his views about women, and the amount of freedom that was good for them—he was a devastatingly attractive man whose dark good looks alone could surely command him any heart he chose, and with the added attraction of his wealth and position he must be a master of hearts!

As for herself, what she was going to do she didn't quite know. For if she went away she would never see him again . . . If she stayed . . . her own heart would probably be broken into numberless tiny pieces.

She wondered whether this thing that hid happened to her—this unfortunate, but tremendous thing—had

brought about any noticeable change in her, and realised how careful she would have to be to keep it from those around her—particularly, of course, the Conde!

This was somewhat forcibly brought home to her when, two days after the dinner-party to which the O'Farrels had been invited, she met her sister-in-law while she and the children were out walking. Peggy didn't normally choose this roundabout way home when she had been shopping in Amara, but as soon as she caught sight of Kathleen, with Jerry and Joe ambling along sedately and correctly one on either side of her, she hurried her pace.

"I was hoping I might see something of you," she admitted to Kathleen. Her face was heated, but her eyes were curious and rather eager. They seemed to search Kathleen's face avidly. "What happened the other night?" she wanted to know. "Why did you disappear and not say goodnight?"

Kathleen hesitated. She realised she didn't know what the Conde had said in order to explain her absence.

"The children . ." she began, and Peggy nodded.

"I understood one of them was wakeful. What a nuisance when it was such a lovely evening, and we were all having such a good time!" She looked at the children a shade reproachfully, and then with amusement when she recognised the alertness of two small pairs of ears. Kathleen was thankful she didn't ask which one of them was wakeful, for both would almost certainly have denied it, and then her explanation would have fallen flat. Instead Peggy ruffled the bright red heads. "How unlike their mother they are, aren't they?" she said.

Kathleen admitted as much. She was still feeling full of indignation towards Dona Inez, although the latter had tried to explain away her conduct by saying that she didn't think Kathleen would mind And she had followed up the half-apology with a beautiful silken head-square which Kathleen had promptly given away to one of the maids.

"She's very beautiful, Dona Inez," Peggy observed, searching in her basket for some chocolate, which she presented to the twins once she had found it. "And so youthful-looking to be the mother of a pair like this!"

"I understand they take after their father," Kathleen remarked.

Peggy raised her brows, as much as to say: "Fancy a lovely woman like that falling for a man who looked like these two! . . ." And then decided that, in spite of the distraction of the chocolate, the two little pitchers had very long ears and it would not be safe. `Oh, well," she said instead, "everyone to his, or her, taste!"

And then she looked at Kathleen.

"At least they have a terribly attractive uncle! He made us so very welcome the other night, and could not have behaved more charmingly! Don't you agree with me now, Kathie, that he's everything I once inferred he could be?"

"You said he had charm," Kathleen recalled.

Peggy's eyes twinkled a little.

"I'm beginning to think that's rather an inadequate word! Shane agrees with me, tool"

"Oh!" Kathleen said.

Peggy nodded vigorously.

"Did you know he actually paid a call on us the morning after the party?"

"He did—what?" Kathleen looked completely unbelieving. "What—what on earth for?"

Peggy seemed suddenly to become concerned about a parcel that appeared to be missing, and conducted an anxious search which was rewarded after a second or so by the discovery of it reposing beneath a couple of English library books at the bottom of her basket.

"Well, as a matter of fact I'm not altogether certain . . ." She took up the thread of the Conde's visit where she had left it off. "His ostensible reason was that he wanted to have a look at some of Shane's pictures—they had talked about them the night before, and he thought that several of his friends might be

interested in them as well. He did actually buy a whole half-dozen, and you can imagine how that pleased me! Several of Shane's efforts have been cluttering up the spare room for months, and although of course I know they're good I'd rather see the money for them. The Conde wrote out a cheque that took my breath away when I saw it, and part of it has already been expended on some new curtain material for the dining-room."

Peggy beamed happily.

"You know how shabby they were! The new ones are going to give the place an entirely new `look'."

"How nice," Kathleen commented mechanically. But she was thinking, so the Conde didn't spend the whole morning with Carmelita! Her heart started to thud a little. "What else did the Conde talk about?"

Peggy became interested in her basket again, which was certainly filled to overflowing.

"I'll have to get something more sensible than this when I go shopping!" She looked quickly at Kathleen and away. Kathleen's leaping pulses slowed a little. "He talked very pleasantly of several things . . . The changes that will take place at the quinta when he marries, and his sister leaves. He is buying a villa for his sister farther along the coast." Again the odd, quick look at Kathleen. "The boys won't go to school yet, however."

Kathleen felt as if something within her grew limp and quiet.

"He—he actually talked to you about marriage? His own marriage!"

"Oh, nothing precisely specific." Peggy looked down at the white toe of her sandal, and drew patterns in the dust with the cork sole. "I think he's really contemplating marriage, but at the moment he's planning alterations to the house. He wants a part of the grounds re-laid out, and he's got ideas about a new wing being built on to the house itself. That's probably where he's going to hang Shane's pictures." She grinned rather feebly. "It's probably going to be an English wing."

"Do you think Carmelita Albrantes will want an English wing?" Kathleen asked quietly, and Peggy quite noticeably avoided her sister-in-law's eyes.

"I couldn't say. But then I don't know very much

about Carmelita. And we none of us know for certain

that it's Carmelita the Conde's going to marry!" Kathleen turned away.

"I don't think there's very much doubt about it," she said.

The children were growing restless, and she was glad of the excuse to move on. She seized their hands, and tried to smile naturally at Peggy.

"Well, it's been nice running into you like this. Tell Shane I'm pleased about the pictures. I expect the next time I visit you you'll have the dining-room curtains hanging up and looking very splendid! I'll probably think I've come to the wrong house!"

Peggy tried to look as if she was thrilled at the thought of her home being thus transformed, but there was no doubt that she was anxious about Kathleen. The girl's smile was fixed and strained, and it was quite easy to understand what had happened to her. She had started off by quite violently disliking the Conde, and now she was . . . In love with him? Almost any girl could fall in love with the Conde, Peggy thought. Any susceptible girl most certainly would. Kathleen, however, wasn't susceptible, but she had reached an age when it would be a disaster for her if she fell in love with the wrong man!

"I make it a rule never to listen to gossip," Peggy said quickly, as if that might offer a grain of comfort. "Carmelita has never struck me as the ideal wife for Miguel de Chaves! In a few years she will not merely be quite plain, but she'll be dull, also! I should like to see the Conde married to someone rather more —more suited to himself!"

"Perhaps he considers Carmelita is very well suited to himself," Kathleen returned, and then added quickly that they must hurry, because the children's tea would be overdue, and it was the maid's evening off.

Peggy watched her hasten away through the blazing afternoon sunshine with her charges, and then turned and started on the remainder of her own walk home. She was not quite certain what that accidental meeting had achieved.

Kathleen handed over the children to Maria when she got indoors, and then went off to her own room to wash her hands and slip into a clean, crisp dress. But everything she did was purely mechanical, and she kept remembering the way Peggy had looked at her ... a vaguely uneasy look at first, and then a definitely sympathetic look.

Peggy knew very well that the Conde was planning to marry Carmelita, but she more than suspected that her sister-in-law had done the one thing she ought never to have done. The one thing no sensible employee ever did, and that was fall in love with her employer.

Peggy was probably wishing very hard that she had never brought her into contact with such a danger, but the damage was done now, and only Kathleen herself knew how irreparable it was. But at least she could look to her defences and make certain no one else guessed how completely she had succumbed to the fascination of the man who paid her her salary.

And the fact that it was such a good salary made the whole thing seem rather worse. It underlined the difference between them, even if there had been no Carmelita. He was rich, and she was grateful for the careless generosity that made the post she now held a valuable one. When she had to give it up she would be poorer in more ways than one. She would be financially less secure, and she would probably never see him again.

But it was the last thought that shook her. One could always get another job, but in the whole wide world there could be only one Miguel de Chaves.

Which proved how completely she had changed in her ideas about him since that first bleak interview in the library.

CHAPTER TWELVE

ANOTHER couple of weeks passed away, and Kathleen saw rather less of the Conde than she had done up till now. He was seldom in to lunch, and when he was Carmelita occupied the guest of honour's place at the table. That is to say she sat on his right hand and chattered to him as if Kathleen was not in the room with them, and sometimes it was a little embarrassing because she had a habit of slipping a hand inside his arm, and appealing to him in a very feminine way. And he rewarded her doe-like glances with a marked attentiveness that was even more embarrassing to the English girl, who had no one to prepare her peach for her or select a few of the choicest grapes from the great silver basket of fruit and place them on her fruit-plate.

It was true that she always refused dessert — not because she wasn't tempted by it, but because she was so anxious to leave them alone together. And she frequently scalded herself by drinking her coffee while it was too hot with the same purpose in mind.

For she was sure Carmelita heaved a sigh of relief when she was on the other side of the dining-room door.

She was also reasonably certain that Carmelita, in her pretty, plaintive way, had asked more than once why it was necessary for a governess to have her meals with her employer. But she didn't dare to try and convince herself that the Conde appeared surprised by such a question. He probably merely said that she was English, her people lived in the district, and it didn't seem quite right to confine her altogether to the nurseries.

Very occasionally Dona Inez lunched with them, and once Carmelita came early, driving herself in a small cream-coloured car, and spent the whole of the

morning with the twins' mother. When Kathleen had occasion to knock upon the sitting-room door in order to consult Dona Inez about a matter in connection with the children, she was invited to enter and found the two occupants of the room bending enthusiastically above a bale of heavy white satin damask on a side table, and fingering it appreciatively. Near them on a chesterfield couch was a pile of exclusive fashion magazines, one of which appeared to be a bridal number.

Inez looked rather vaguely at Kathleen as she put forward her request for permission to make a dental appointment for Jerry, and then nodded casually.

"Of course, if you think it's necessary." Then she lifted an end of the wonderful material and held it up against herself. "It's exquisite," she said, dreamily. "That faint golden thread that runs through it gives it an extra richness. I would like a wedding-gown of this material myself."

"Then you must get married again," Carmelita said gently, and smiled at her.

Inez made a slight shrugging movement with here shoulders, and dropped the satin.

"Perhaps I will one day," she answered. "When I am quite sure that I am behaving wisely!" She frowned, and Kathleen was sure she was thinking of Fernando, and that she was very certain her affair with him was anything but wise. "But, in any case, white is for very young and innocent brides, and I will never be that again."

She turned to Kathleen, as if suddenly recollecting that she, too, was young and might one day be a bride, and invited her to come and make a closer inspection of the shimmering beauty that was lying draped over the table.

"Do come and have a good look at this, Miss O'Farrell Isn't it quite gorgeous? And won't Senhorita Albrantes make a perfectly enchanting bride?"

For one moment Kathleen felt as if a rude hand actually caught at her heart and squeezed all the

life out of it, and her limbs refused to obey her as she tried to move forward to the table. She was dimly aware of Carmelita turning rather a delicate pink, and Inez with over-bright, faintly mocking eyes fixed on her own face, as if she perfectly understood how she was feeling — although this was so unlikely that afterwards Kathleen recognised that it was her agonised imagination that was playing her tricks. But her imagination had not conjured up that bridal silk, or put words into Inêz's mouth that she would have given anything not to hear.

"Senhorita Albrantes is getting married soon, and we are trying to select designs for her wedding-gown. My own dressmaker in Lisbon is going to hurry the thing through, and I can assure you it will be the most wonderful wedding-gown in all the world when it is finished!" She looked rather condescendingly at Carmelita. "You will owe me a debt of gratitude when you see how much skill has gone into the construction of this all-important robe! Senhora Araujo has few rivals, and even in Paris you would not do any better!"

"I am quite sure I would not," Carmelita agreed flutteringly, and flushed much more deeply, and considerably less attractively. "I am deeply grateful to you for putting me in touch with her, Inez."

Inez shrugged again dismissingly.

"Naturally, in the circumstances, I could not do anything else! We all want you to appear at your best, and very soon now you will be a close relative of mine." She smiled as if something about the other girl touched her suddenly. "It will be nice having you in the family, Carmelita!"

Kathleen withdrew from the room, carrying with her Inez's permission to have two of Jerry's upper teeth stopped, and if couldn't be avoided a lower one pulled. But as she walked blindly back to the nurseries she wasn't thinking about teeth and the importance of getting Jeronimo to a dentist as quickly as possible, but the final conclusive proof she had received that

morning that for once gossip hadn't lied, and the Conde de Chaves' future bride was a girl he had known all his life.

Carmelita Albrantes was the reason why he had been able to state so decidedly that he was in love — irrecoverably in love!

That afternoon several people came to tea, and Carmelita was joined by her aunt, and the Conde drove them home after they had stayed for an informal cocktail-party on the terrace.

Kathleen received an instruction from Dona Inez to bring the children down to the sala for tea, and Carmelita attempted to insinuate herself into their good graces, but although on their best behaviour neither Jerry nor Joe were attracted by her overtures. They clung determinedly to Kathleen's hands, and although she used every endeavour to persuade them to leave her side neither cream cakes nor crystallised fruits would woo them away from her. The Conde glanced at her a little oddly once or twice, she thought, and she wondered whether he was vexed because Carmelita's efforts went unrewarded.

She managed to attach the children to their mother for a while, and went back to her own room in order to give them no excuse for being awkward. But after a bare quarter-of-an-hour a maid requested her to collect her charges, and Dona Inez was obviously thankful to be rid of them when she entered the room.

Carmelita observed in an unusually clear voice that the children seemed to be very fond of their governess, and the Conde held open the door for them when they set off to return to the Nursery.

"You will join us on the terrace when these small people have been handed over to Maria?" he said to Kathleen, his unfathomable dark grey eyes seeking and holding hers.

But Kathleen was so surprised by the pointedness of the invitation that she flushed and refused at once.

"Thank you, senhor, but Maria has had a slight accident to her hand, and tonight I am putting them to bed and giving them their supper."

"I see," he said quietly, and as he lowered his glance and bent his sleek dark head — the merest suggestion of his slight, perfunctory little bow — she was glad that the excuse was not an invention, for Maria had actually sustained an injury to her hand, and for a day or two she would have to be relieved of some of her duties.

But two nights later there was a birthday dinner for Dona Inez, and Kathleen made the excuse that Jerry was still being afflicted by toothache to absent herself from it. And the following afternoon the local elite turned up in force to attend a garden-party in the lovely grounds, and Kathleen accepted the offer of one of the younger maids to take charge of Jerry and Joe while she slipped out to spend a couple of hours with Peggy and Shane.

She didn't dare to ask for a car so she once more walked, and the explanation she offered to her relatives was the sudden violent need she had felt to see someone of her own kind. Peggy looked dubious, particularly as the quinta garden-parties were far-famed. Apparently she and Shane had received an invitation which they had had to decline because Shane was working hard on a special commission and couldn't spare the time, and if the Conde found out that they had entertained Kathleen it might look a little ungracious. Doubly ungracious since Kathleen obviously preferred to seek her diversions away from the house.

Shane drove her back, but she insisted on him putting her down outside the gate of the quinta — in fact, well away from the ornamental gateway — and stole in by a side entrance as if she had a guilty conscience. But she need not have bothered to screen her movements, for apparently no one observed her or was interested in looking out for her, and that night when she entered the great dining-room it was to find that she

was to have her meal in solitary state, for the Conde and his sister and Carmelita and several of their friends had gone dining and dancing at a popular night-haunt in Amara.

Kathleen felt like someone who had been finally abandoned, and for the first time since she had fingered the material of Carmelita's wedding-gown she stopped pretending to herself that this was a phase she would get over. Alone, and lapped about by misery in the silent dining-room, she knew that she would never recover from the loss of a man who could never have been hers.

Which was a paradox she didn't recognise, so great was her misery.

She saw nothing of the Conde during the whole of the next day, or the day after that, and then Dona Inez let drop the information that he was leaving for Lisbon in another week. From Lisbon he was proceeding to Paris, partly in connection with business and partly in order to be able to act as escort to Senhorita Albrantes and her aunt, who were visiting the French capital to indulge in an orgy of highly important shopping.

Kathleen felt so stunned by this news that she decided to keep out of the Conde's way altogether — or, at any rate, as much as it was possible — for the next few days, until the lovely quinta no longer had its master beneath its roof. If the torment of knowing that she had to live without the sight of him, and the knowledge that he was nowhere near to her, had to be faced up to within a matter of a week, then the sooner she did so the better! The torment wouldn't be any the less, but at least it would be immediate, and not something deferred.

So when she and the children were walking in the grounds she was careful to keep out of range of the library windows, and the first note of the luncheon gong saw her in the dining-room so that she could leave before the Conde had sometimes barely taken

,

his seat. Her excuse was that Maria's hand was not quite well yet, and she didn't like to leave the children with her for any length of time; and at night the same excuse was most useful, particularly as Joe had lately taken to having nightmares and it was as well for someone like herself to be on hand.

Dona Inez smiled in her cool, detached way, and remarked that Kathleen was unusually conscientious, but she would be the last to quarrel with conscientiousness. But Miguel looked down his beautifully straight nose and tightened his lips occasionally, as if he didn't altogether approve of such an excess of zeal.

The night before he left for Lisbon he insisted on Kathleen drinking a little wine, although she normally emphatically refused, and offered as explanation of his insistence the fact that she was looking rather pale.

"You mustn't take your duties too seriously, Miss O'Farrel," he said. "You are employed here as a governess, not a slave!"

Inez looked at him with amusement in her eyes.

"Our little Miss O'Farrel likes doing the job she is employed to do thoroughly," she said. "You should be thankful that it is so, and that we can place so much reliance in her. You can go away from here tomorrow knowing that the house will not be wrecked in your absence!"

"That, at least, is something," he said.

"You and Carmelita can have quiet minds," Inez remarked a little drily. "And in return I promise you that during your absence I will not permit our little Irish girl to listen too frequently to the blandishments of Fernando Queiroz! Although of course I can't prevent her seeing him if she wants to!"

She looked at Kathleen with deliberately indulgent eyes, and Kathleen — realising that if Fernando came to the quinta it would be to see Inez, and not her —felt suddenly strongly revolted by the other woman's pretence, and rose to leave the table.

"If you will excuse me, I would like to go upstairs now," she said.

But the Conde rose also.

"Certainly you may go upstairs and look at the children if you wish," he agreed. "But once you have done so I would like you to return downstairs and join me in the library. There are one or two things I would like to say to you before I leave here tomorrow!"

Kathleen felt her knees tremble suddenly, not merely with nervousness, but with the sudden delight of knowing that she was to see a little more of him before he left. The delight made her feel weak, incapable of immediate response or action of any sort, but she realised that he was waiting to hold open the door for her, and she moved towards it at last with the sensation that she was walking temporarily on air.

All through dinner she had been dreading the moment when she must make that request to leave the table — her throat dry with secret agony, because time was running out, and she would probably not see him at all in the morning. But now, all in a moment, she had received a small reprieve, and she was to see him in the library! Whatever it was he had to say to her —probably some instructions about his nephews, or possibly a caution about Fernando Queiroz — didn't much matter, because the important thing was that for a brief island of time they would be alone together, without even Inez's cynical, watching eyes to mar the dearness of those moments.

And, she thought, with a catch in her breath, even if he did caution her about Fernando they would be dear!

He watched her walk across the hall before he closed the door of the dining-room, and she thought she heard Dona Inez say something in a bright, amused voice. before the door finally clicked. And she even thought she heard him answer his sister, a trifle sternly.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

WHEN she entered the library in response to his quiet "Come in" he was standing before the open window, looking out into the night. All the exquisite scents of the garden were flooding into the room, and the atmosphere seemed almost heavy with the many and conflicting perfumes. A great bowl of waxen blooms on the desk added their incense to the already highly charged atmosphere.

The Conde turned and looked at Kathleen. She was wearing a simple black dress with little or no ornamentation, and her fair hair was coiled neatly on her neck. The man frowned, noting that she looked older — and somehow wiser — than when she first came to the Quinta Cereus, less than a couple of months before. Her blue eyes were not as straight gazing, and they seemed underlined by shadows — and there was a resigned look about the set of her lips.

The Conde asked abruptly:

"You are not happy, Kathleen?"

He had never called her Kathleen before, and she

wondered whether her ears were playing her tricks. "I am perfectly happy, senhor!" she answered. Miguel frowned again.

"Must I always be senhor?" Then he turned back to the winodw, and the set of his shoulders seemed strangely impatient. "I suppose that is how you will always think of me!"

Kathleen felt her knees begin to tremble again, but before they could affect her whole body with weakness the elegant black-and-white shape in the window wheeled and put her hastily into a chair, and he apologised for his tardiness rather curtly.

"You must forgive me, Miss O'Farrel! I have been somewhat preoccupied all day today, and now there are several things I want to say to you — ask you!" He offered her his gleaming cigarette-case because he

knew she smoked occasionally, but she shook her head. Speech seemed to have dried up in her throat, and it was such a white and slender throat that his eyes seemed attracted to it as if by a magnet when she swallowed noticeably. "You will not? Then perhaps a small glass of wine? You are not quite yourself tonight, are you?"

"I am perfectly all right, senhor," she assured him with slight huskiness. "Perfectly all right!"

But there was a definite crease of anxiety between his brows as he accepted her assurance.

"In that case will you please tell me why you have been avoiding me so much lately?"

"Avoiding you?" Her eyes swept up to his face, and in the softly-lit library she was quite unable to conceal the fact that he had startled her. "But, why should I avoid you, senhor?" she prevaricated. "Surely that is entirely your imagination? You are my employer .. . You have been — kind! — to me! . . . There is absolutely no reason why I should avoid you . . ." her voice trailing off.

"None that I, personally, can think of," he agreed drily. "In the beginning I was perhaps a little harsh with you . . . I gave you a certain amount of cause to dislike me! But I had hoped that we had got beyond that early misunderstanding and were now capable of appreciating each other's good qualities." He smiled a little wryly. "Possibly you do not think I have many good qualities, but I have discovered what a capable young woman you are, what an earnest and reliable young woman — so different to my first conception of you! And even that was affected by the extreme femininity of your appearance!"

She said nothing, but her heart was pounding, and he stepped back and lighted himself a cigarette, frowning over the operation as if he, too, were quite unlike himself, tonight, and he had a problem he wished to get to the bottom of.

"Miss O'Farrel—Kathleen!" He said her name again, quite clearly and distinctly. "Is it because I interfered

on that night when you met young Queiroz in the corridor that you have learned to dislike me afresh?" She gasped.

"But I don't dislike you!" Unwarily she rushed on. "I don't dislike you in the very least . . . And you can't really believe that I met Senhor Queiroz in the corridor that night by appointment! It was just an accident . . ."

He was staring hard at her.

"I had already gathered that," he admitted.

"And although you saw him kissing my hand that was merely a cover-up for a—for a—"

"An even more compromising situation?" She thought his sensitive nostrils were dilating a little. "That much, also, I had already gathered!"

"Then . . ." She stared at him helplessly. "Surely you recognised that the sort of kiss Senhor Queiroz —snatched! — was the sort of kiss he would have bestowed upon one of your maids, in similar circumstances, if she had attracted him enough!"

"I think not!" The Conde's mouth was grim and displeased. "Even Fernando — young though he is — would not confuse you for an instant with one of the maids! And if he waylaid you it was because you attracted him enough to make the risk of being interrupted while he was proving the attraction was quite worthwhile. Inez, for instance, might have come along that corridor instead of myself!"

Kathleen turned away her face, not willing to involve his sister.

"So you do realise the form of attraction it was," she said rather bitterly.

The Conde once more walked to the open french window, and as he looked along one of the pale paths which led deep into the garden, and his cigarette smouldered unheeded between his fingers, he asked as if the words offended his lips:

"Are you quite sure you have not a greater liking for Fernando than you pretend? Are you quite sure that the quality of his admiration — which you seem

very certain about! — is not in itself one of the main

causes of your present and unmistakable unhappiness?"

"I am not in the least unhappy! I—!" Kathleen rose, and in a fever of resentment moved nearer to him in the window. "How can you be so stupid as to imagine for one single, solitary instant—you, a man who should have some practical commonsense and discernment!—that I would allow myself to be made unhappy because a philanderer like Fernando Queiroz should choose to affront me at a moment when I wasn't feeling at all like being insulted? If you hadn't come along when you did I would have boxed his ears"!—her blue eyes flashed indignant sparks—"and I wouldn't have allowed Dona Inez to get away with her indiscretions by placing the blame on me if I had felt as I did when I first came here!"

Suddenly she paused, shocked by the realisation of how much she had almost certainly revealed by that last turbulent admission; but the Conde was not going to allow her to get away with anything unexplained.

"You mean that when you first came here it didn't matter to you whether you stayed or departed the following week?"

"Something—something like that . . ." She turned away, wishing the lights, although discreet, were a little less searching.

"And now it is important to you that you should stay here? You do not wish to leave us?"

She hung her head, feeling and looking almost painfully confused.

"I have just begun to settle down . . ."

"Exactly," he said, softly. No longer was there any suggestion of a frown between his infinitely black brows, and his eyes were suddenly as dark as sloes, and very brilliant, under his thick black eyelashes. "You have just begun to settle down, and Queiroz has nothing to do with that melancholy which makes your eyes so heavy tonight. And they are heavy!" bending his head and peering into them gently.

Instantly she lowered them—her sole form of protection against him just then—and he took her arm and led her towards the window.

"It is airless in here, and we will walk a little," he suggested quietly. "Tomorrow I shall be far from here, so we will seize the opportunity to stroll for a while tonight."

She allowed him to guide her out on to the dimly seen path, and because the moon had not yet risen the garden was a very shadowy place indeed. But here and there the starlight lay like mother-of-pearl on the colourful mosaic over which they trod, and the shadows of trees and shrubs were inky-black against the jewel-studded night sky. There was the gentle music of falling water, and water that was being caught and held in a marble basin; and in the ornamental goldfish pools there was an occasional plop as a wakeful occupant rose to the surface, and then dived back again to the green, unseen depths. And not very far away the sea was breaking murmurously on the white beach, and the tang of it was invigorating rising above the perfume of the flowers.

Kathleen didn't have to bother about where she placed her feet, because the Conde's hand was strong and sure beneath her elbow, and his low voice in her ear was all the guidance she needed. Even her heartbeats had slowed so that she could breathe more easily, and a nightmarish cloak of unhappiness had slipped away from her.

For the moment this was enough—and more than enough! And the only wish of which she was capable was that the garden stretched into illimitable distance, and that she and the man who suddenly seemed so much nearer to her in spirit need never return to the house. Or, if they had to return to it, it could be with this sudden unexpected bond between them undisturbed and unbroken. This blissful, light-headed bond!

This almost complete harmony! .. .

Miguel stopped suddenly in the middle of a grove of ilex, and the harmony became really complete when

he released her arm and took both of her hands, and in that narrow tunnel of scented darkness she felt his lean, firm fingers pressing hers tightly.

"Kathleen—" his voice seemed strange, and moved, and a little husky, as hers had been earlier in the evening—"Kathleen, there is something that I must know! The way you looked tonight—the way you have looked for days!—had it anything to do with the fact that I am leaving here tomorrow?"

She dared not answer him, so she caught her breath. Her fingers began to hurt as his fastened about them almost cruelly.

"I tell you that I must know!" he insisted. "In fairness to us both, Kathleen, if it is so please tell me!"

She didn't need to tell him then—not in so many words. She forgot Carmelita and the white satin damask that was being made up into a wedding-gown; the fact that Miguel was to accompany her to Paris, and that shopping for a wedding was the main pretext for the visit. She forgot everything but the note of urgency she had detected in his voice, and the inexpressible dearness of him as he stood there so close to her. She made a tiny movement as if she would clutch at him, and instantly his arms were about her, and he was holding her so close that she could feel the violent thudding of his heart, and the tremor that ran through him as her whole slight body yielded to him immediately.

"My darling, my little one!" he breathed into the soft gold hair that strayed over the front of his jacket.

"And you would have kept it from me! You would have let me go without this knowledge!"

He put his fingers under her chin and lifted it, and a pale beam from the late rising moon found an entrance through the clipped ilex and showed him her eyes, swimming with wonder.

"Don't you know that that would have been cruel?" he said, and bent to cover her mouth with his own, fiercely, possessively, ardently and triumphantly.

Kathleen could only cling to him, quite certain that none of this was actually happening, but terrified at the same time to attempt so much as a single word that might shatter the glorious illusion. Never in her whole life had she dreamed that a man's lips taking toll of her eager, tremulous ones could fill her with such ecstatic happiness, or that his tender murmurings in Portuguese could cause her bones to melt so that her being seemed to become fused with his. And not merely fused with his, but inextricably a part of him.

Never, never, after this delirious experience would she ever possess any identity of her own, or have any real existence apart from him! She might live, but she would never be really alive, not as she was alive now, with his kisses descending on her pale, bemused face and banishing the pallor, transforming the whole soft area of her smooth cheeks into a rosy blush unseen in the starry darkness!

At last he rested his cheek against her hair, and strove for speech—practical, necessary speech.

"Tomorrow I shall be gone away from you," he said, "but before the Wine harvest I will be back! That will be in two or three weeks time. They will pass, my little one, because everything that has to be endured passes in time, and then there will be the bliss of our reunion!" Once more he tilted her chin, and strove to look deeply into her eyes. "I love you so much, little English Kathleen! . . . So much!" he repeated, his voice shaking.

She clung to him despairingly, because he had mentioned separation.

"And I love you, too! . . . Oh, Miguel, I love you, too!" She told him, not even noticing that she had made use of his Christian name; but he did, and he laughed softly and triumphantly against her ear.

"So it is not always to be senhor! . . . Never again will it be senhor!"

He bent and pressed his lips to the starry eyes, kissing them almost reverently.

"I shall dream of these moments when I am away from you, dear heart! But, as I have said, the time will pass—and I shall think of you waiting here for me, perhaps longing for me!" His arms strained her to him, and she suffered exquisite agony, but would gladly have endured it for the rest of her life if only this magic interlude need never end. "Kathleen, you must understand that I have to go, otherwise nothing would induce me to leave you! Not now!"

Carmelita, Carmelita! . . . The name leapt up at her, but somehow she couldn't get it to pass her lips.

"There are certain things we have to do—obligations we cannot escape, and this happens to be one of them! If I could make you understand I would go into details here and now, but I doubt very much whether you would do so very easily. You are English, and you think differently about these matters . . . I am aware of that! But, English or Portuguese—or any other nationality under the sun!—when love comes it will not be denied, and that is how it is with us, my darling! We belong—I think we must have belonged in the very beginning, only we were too stupid to grasp at once the enormity of the thing that had happened to us!—and all these weeks have been wasted, and there is so much to make up! That is why it is so hard that we have to part now!"

Carried along on the stream of his words, uttered in a low, impassioned voice, Kathleen could only feel more and more bemused, and she couldn't even begin to grasp at the significance of them—that he loved her as much as she loved him, and the separation that loomed ahead of them would be a thing of mutual agony. And she wasn't capable of attempting to probe anything at all just then.

"Must we part, Miguel?" she heard herself whispering in a kind of anguish, and he laid his dark cheek against her flushed one, and said sadly that there was no help for it.

"It is unavoidable that we part, sweetheart. And it is just as unavoidable that I go to Paris. So many things

in Life are unavoidable!" and he sighed and let her go.

Paris! . . . Carmelita! She looked at him fearfully.

"You are so lovely, my dear one." He lifted her hands and kissed them lingeringly, turning the soft wrists over so that his lips might lie against the spot where the eager pulses pounded. "You are a white flower of loveliness, and these delicate fingers hold my heart. Remember that while I am away, and whenever there is a moment of doubt! Miguel de Chaves has placed his heart in your hands, and that much of him you will possess always!"

She didn't know how to answer him, and she didn't even know how to thank him for his gift. But her lips trembled, as a violent reaction after so much sudden emotion swept over her, and he saw it and bent and kissed them tenderly.

"You are tired, sweet one, and all this has been rather much for you, on top of your sad little evening! And now you must go back to the house and to bed, and I want you to sleep and forget everything until the morning."

"But—in the morning you will be gone!" she faltered despairingly. "Won't I even see you in the morning, Miguel, before you leave? Won't you at least come up to the nurseries and say goodbye to the children?"

"In the morning I shall be gone before ever you are awake—I hope!" He touched her eyes gently with his sensitive finger-tips. "These lovely eyes need sleep!"

She never remembered very clearly that return to the house, except that she knew his hand was once more under her elbow, and this time they both knew it had a right to be there. She had hurled herself into his arms at the first sign that he wanted her to be there, and what more natural, before they finally parted, than that he should gather her into his arms and kiss her with deep passion that once more melted her bones? In fact, the responsive passion that flamed through her veins was rather frightening to one who had never experienced anything like it before, and when at last he

put her gently away from him—before they emerged on to the open space before the house—she was trembling and uncertain and by no means clear-headed enough to frame coherent speech.

"Goodnight, my heart," Miguel said. "And au revoir!" he added, softly.

Kathleen crossed the floor of the library without seeing any of its opulent magnificence, and half-way up the stairs she heard the french windows through which she had passed in a daze close quietly.

Miguel had followed her into the house, but in a few hours he would have gone away from it. The house would seem unbearably empty!

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THE next morning there was a rose on her breakfast tray—a glorious, dark red bloom, heavy with scent—and the maid explained that the head gardener himself had requested her to see that it was delivered to Miss O'Farrell.

That was all . . . No message, no word. But Kathleen's heart leapt, and all in a moment she was wonderfully, blissfully happy, because the rose, she knew, was Miguel's thought—an expression of his love, which after all was real and not just part of one of her dreams during the night.

And somewhat to her surprise, she had slept all night. She had expected to lie wakeful, thinking of the Conde, determined to be awake when he took his departure in the early morning. She had thought that

from her balcony she might catch a glimpse of him--a discreet glimpse, that would offer him no embarrass-

ment—but the waves of sleep had rushed up over her, and she had been quite unaware of the moment when the man she loved so much left the house.

But the rose was like a reviving draught, a burst of hope. It didn't seem to matter, when she held it in her hands and pressed it to her face, that so much that was unexplained had tormented her the night before. The trip to Paris that was so essential, and Carmelita--Carmelita and the white wedding-gown!

The morning passed very quietly, and she felt very happy wandering in the garden with a pair of twins who were certainly much more disciplined than when she first took over the charge of them. At lunch time she slipped into her room to see her rose gracing the slender crystal vase in which she had placed it, and she once more held it against her face and felt a surge of strength and confidence that would see her through the rest of the day.

For a week life was very uneventful, but very peaceful—singularly, almost blissfully, peaceful. Inez seemed suddenly to have developed an urge to go out and about and meet her friends, and Kathleen nearly always lunched and dined alone. But the huge, empty dining-room no longer worried her, or made her feel forlorn. She could sit and gaze at Miguel's chair—at the great, carved chair at the head of the table — and imagine that he was sitting in it, and that there was no Carmelita on his right hand, and in fact no one but their two selves — Miguel and Kathleen — content in a world where other human beings were not essential.

She never asked herself what her future was likely to be, or what Miguel proposed when he finally returned. He had said nothing about marriage, and the very thought that he might ask her to be his wife set her heart thudding so painfully that she could scarcely breathe. Yet if their relationship was to be a satisfying one — the only possible relationship when they were so much in love! — what else could he intend but to ask her to be his wife?

That night — that blissful last night in the garden—had not provided him with an appropriate moment for a declaration of his intentions, and she couldn't honestly say that it had struck her as strange that he had omitted to do so. She had been in such a bemused state of emotion that practical considerations had not seemed of much importance, although the thought of Senhorita Albrantes had weighed upon her even while Miguel held her in his arms.

She had wanted so badly to ask him about her, but she couldn't find the words . . . Or was it that she had lacked the necessary courage?

When this thought occurred to her she changed the water in her crystal vase, which stood on the little table beside her bed. And when the red rose finally died she placed it in her handkerchief-box, where she would see it every time she went to look for a handkerchief.

Peggy came to tea with her, and she gained permission from Dona Inez to take Jerry and Joe to tea with

Peggy. The children got on famously with Shane, who appeared to have a similar knack to his sister with high-spirited youngsters. They were greatly intrigued by his studio, and he showed them how he mixed his paints, and made rough sketches, and this kept them quiet until tea was ready, after which he took them down on to the shore, which was an unusual treat for them.

While Shane was keeping her charges out of the way, Kathleen talked to her sister-in-law and helped cut bread-and-butter and afterwards to wash up. Peggy found it difficult to keep her eyes off her, and she was a little afraid Kathleen would remark the slight amazement in her own face. For without being aware of it—except, of course, deep down inside her, where contentment reigned supreme—Kathleen was an entirely different person to the girl she had met out walking with her charges only a week or so before. Then she had looked as if nothing would induce her to smile and be completely relaxed again, but now she exuded radiance as if a light had been kindled within her. Her eyes were clear and shining and confident, and her voice was eager.

Peggy was most curious to know the reason for the change, but she didn't dare ask. For one thing, her imagination could be running away with her—but she didn't think so; and for another, Kathleen was not as easily approachable as some girls of her age, and if she wished to hug some joyous secret to herself she had the right to do so. But Peggy hoped it wasn't a secret that was like a bubble that could be pricked. She hoped, too, she wasn't deluding herself about Kathleen.

In possession of certain half-truths, that could easily happen.

When Kathleen took the children home she was so much happier than Peggy suspected that the splendour of the sunset was not as magnificent as the hues that were colouring her whole future. The first thing to bring her just a little down to earth was the sight of Dona

Inez in the hall, sorting cards that had been left on the huge silver salver on one of the glistening side-tables. She was still wearing the chic little hat and glistening silk suit she had worn for an afternoon tea-party, but her expression was anything but festive. She glanced at Kathleen in a way that made the other wonder what it was that she had done wrong, and then ordered her to hand the children over to one of the servants.

"I want to talk to you, Miss O'Farrel," she said sombrely. "Come with me to the library!"

She entered the library as if she looked upon it as entirely her own domain while her brother was away, and flung her gloves down carelessly on the desk. Her gold mesh handbag followed them, and then the little cap of white flowers that had clung to her jetty curls. She shook out the curls impatiently once she was free of the slight feeling of constriction caused by the pressure of the small hat, and then her slim, scarlet-tipped fingers reached for a cigarette in the cedarwood box on the desk. She didn't however, offer Kathleen one.

"I heard from my brother this morning," she said, releasing a cloud of fragrant grey smoke into the air. "So you did something I didn't expect you would do! You gave me away to him about Fernando?"

"Gave you away—?" Kathleen stared at her, not at first realising what she meant.

Inez surveyed her with harsh cynicism and dislike.

"In modern English parlance you 'ratted' on me! And yet I could have sworn you were not the type! . . ." She took a vicious pull on her cigarette. "You're pretty enough for Fernando to chase after — but don't imagine for one instant that he wouldn't do so to anyone with your looks, and even if they were a little more mediocre!—and it wasn't hurting you to let Miguel think Fernando was amusing himself with you! Miguel has other interests, and it wouldn't cause him to lose any sleep because a little nursery-governess was being made occasional light love to! Or I wouldn't have thought so until I received his letter this morning."

Kathleen asked quietly, "What did the letter say?"

"It said that he hoped I was remembering my dignity fit for the mother of a pair of sons while he was away, and that I would be wise if I stopped encouraging Fernando!" The glorious dark eyes sparkled with annoyance. "He also requested me to keep you out of my affairs in future!"

Kathleen was silent.

"So that means you gave me away! And as far as I can make out you'd nothing to gain by it!"

Kathleen stared down at the carpet.

"I had this much to gain," she said, in a composed voice. "In the first place the letter you wrote me was such a fabrication that I very nearly showed it to your brother straight away, and in the second — I don't permit young men of Senhor Queiroz's type to make what you call 'light love' to me." Her blue eyes were raised, and looked condemningly at Inez. "Whatever, if you'll forgive me for saying so, you may do yourself!"

"I see!" But Inez's eyes were suddenly shrewd. "You would, however, permit a man of my brother's type to do so, if he felt so disposed? Is that it?"

Kathleen flushed painfully, and in a hopelessly revealing fashion, and Inez laughed, as if she was suddenly intensely amused.

"Don't tell me he has already done so, and that that was the reason why you decided to make a clean breast? My poor child," still laughing with shrill amusement, "Miguel is by no means a philanderer, but I've known him take note of quite a few pretty faces in his lifetime, and the fact that he won't have an opportunity to do so much longer must have acted like a goad." She looked closely at Kathleen. "Have you any idea at all why he's gone to Paris with Carmelita? I wonder what he told you before he left?"

"Why should he tell me anything?" Kathleen returned, with a stiffness that seemed to be spreading through all her limbs.

"Then he didn't tell you?" Inez took a step towards her, as if she was slightly amazed. "But I thought

everybody knew by this time! Why on earth do you think Carmelita has practically lived here during the past few weeks, and why did I put her in touch with my own dressmaker who wouldn't fail to turn her out a superb wedding-dress? One doesn't do that for one's casual acquaintances, you know, and I have every prospect of acquiring a sister-in-law before very long!"

Kathleen wondered whether it was the careless casualness of the other's tone that carried conviction, or whether she had secretly known this all the time. Carmelita, and the back-thought of Carmelita, had haunted even her pleasantest dreams during the past week, and even in her happiest moments she had never been entirely free from . . . What was it that she hadn't been entirely free from? Fear?

Inez suddenly looked slightly and politely shocked.

"My poor child," she exclaimed again, "no wonder you wanted to disprove that story of mine about you and Fernando! . . . But you can take it from me Fernando is all on the surface, and there are no dangerous depths to him!" Her brow puckered. "I simply can't understand my brother . . . Unless, of course — you are pretty! .. . Frightfully pretty, and he and Carmelita have been betrothed since they were children . . . And men are not like women — even Portuguese men slip up sometimes! . . . By that I mean the formal, correct type, like Miguel. He wouldn't want to do you any harm, but—"

Kathleen turned away. She felt as if something had caught her a glancing sideways blow that had partially stunned her, and she also felt a little sick.

"If you have said all you wish to say to me, Dona Inez, may I go?" she asked, with a blind look in her eyes. "It's the children's supper time."

Inez regarded her in silence for several seconds that were sheer agony to Kathleen.

"Yes, you may go," she said at last. "But don't allow yourself to be upset over this news about Miguel — and apparently it is news! I know most women find him attractive, but you English are so sensible...

Like my American husband, Joe! A Portuguese girl would be badly upset, but with you it will be your pride that will suffer most. And you won't run out on us, will you?" with sudden concern.

"Run—out on you?" Kathleen framed the words as if even her tongue was stiff.

"Yes — run out on me and the children! Decide that you don't want to stay here, and that you'd like another job. In the circumstances I suppose it wouldn't be strange if you did feel like rushing back to England . . . But," appealingly, "it wouldn't get you anywhere — except away from Miguel! — and remember that he's not the only good-looking man in the world! Even if he is rich," rather drily.

Kathleen felt in those moments that if she had the urge to run out on anyone just then it was Inez herself. For she had uttered those last words deliberately, with an intention to wound: "Even if he is rich!"

So that was what Inez thought about her, but what she thought about herself was far more contemptible. Knowing about Carmelita — having actually handled the material of Carmelita's wedding-dress — had opportunities (so many of them!) to watch her and Miguel de Chaves together, she had yet been so blinded and besotted by her own love for him that she hadn't waited for any protestations on his part but had simply hurled herself into his arms the very first moment he gave her any indication that they were willing to receive her!

Now she could understand with painful clarity why, on that last night in the garden, Miguel had talked so sadly about Life having its obligations, and things that were unavoidable. Possibly — just possibly — he wasn't really in love with Carmelita, but he was going to marry her.

Then --- and as she climbed the winding staircase, with its marble treads and handsome baroque handrail, Kathleen felt a tiny hot flush sting the whiteness of her cheeks — what had he meant when he said that

he and she belonged, and why had he spoken of the bliss of their reunion? What sort of place was he planning for her in his future?

The hot flush spread wildly, and she was glad that she had to force herself to behave rationally, and take over the charge of the children.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

DURING the next three weeks there were many moments when Kathleen all but decided to pack her cases and slip away from the quinta without informing anyone of her intentions. Not even Peggy and Shane, who would ask all sorts of awkward questions which she would find it impossible to answer. She could send them an evasive letter when she reached England, merely giving them the excuse that she had felt overwhelmingly homesick, and they would have to be content with that.

And then she knew that they wouldn't be content with it. And, in any case, she couldn't possibly do such a thing as go home to England without saying goodbye to them, and that meant that she would have to stay where she was. Until the Conde returned, at least.

Once again she had got into the habit of thinking of him — she forced herself to think of him — as the Conde.

So far as she knew Inez received no further letters from him, and the days passed, bringing them nearer and nearer to the final celebrations of the wine-harvest. Already the grapes were being pressed, and many of the vineyards were bare. The fruit that had been swelling and ripening all summer was now to become a source of income, and the Conde's coffers would benefit.

The splendid summer was loath to draw to a close, and the days were still golden and warm. There were fewer holiday-makers, but the sea was just as brilliant, the skies as clear. If Kathleen's own skies had been as unsullied she would have felt that her heart had every reason to be light. As it was, even amidst so much colour and charm, her heart was mostly leaden, and when Peggy ran in to her nowadays by accident she didn't think she looked as if she was bubbling over with secret happiness.

But Kathleen was careful to keep out of Peggy's way. She knew that her sister-in-law was shrewd, and although she wouldn't actually ask questions, her eyes would do so. And there was always the possibility that Shane might prove curious, and say something. Shane had always had his only sister's interests very much at heart.

Taking the children for longer and longer walks, which they thoroughly enjoyed even if she did not, Kathleen found herself dwelling constantly upon the thought of the Conde in Paris, unable to tear himself away from it — or perhaps Carmelita was unable to tear herself away from it, and naturally he wouldn't leave her. They would be lunching and dining at smart restaurants, watching fashion parades, visiting the theatre, night-clubs, the houses of Parisian friends. Very likely they had quite a number of friends in Paris, and there would be week-ends in the country, in stately chateaux. Carmelita would be accepted everywhere as Miguel de Chaves' fiancée, and perhaps one of those dreamy, romantic chateaux would be offered to them for their honeymoon.

Kathleen was certain Carmelita would want to accept. Who wouldn't . . . ? If she was to be married to Miguel!

About the middle of the fourth week after his departure from the quinta the Conde returned to it, and Dona Inez received an intimation just before lunch on the day he returned. She went up to the nurseries and told the children, with a bright, cool smile on her face, that their uncle would be back, and very likely he would bring them each a present — at least, he might if they behaved themselves! And then she carefully avoided Kathleen's eyes and said that if she wanted it she could have the afternoon off. Possibly she might like to pay a visit to her relatives, and Maria could take charge of the children.

For the first time since she had known Dona Inez Kathleen felt grateful to her. She accepted the after-

noon off with alacrity, but she had no intention of visiting Shane and Peggy. She dressed herself in a simple little blue and white linen dress, took a cardigan and her handbag and walked into Amara. It was crowded with people from the surrounding districts, and en fete and thoroughly carefree, for the next day there was to be a procession, and all the gala accompaniments that market the final celebrations of the wine-harvest.

Kathleen hadn't realised it would be so crowded, and she found it difficult to get herself served with even a coffee at one of the open-air cafés. There were gay groups of young men and girls who had toiled for days in the sun, and were very brown, who were in the mood to oust everyone else, and the holidaymakers who were left caught the atmosphere of carnival, and behaved as they probably would never have done in their own countries. They clamoured for souvenirs in the crowded shops, and talked in loud voices to prove their nationality. They packed flower-draped hotel balconies, and insisted upon prompt service in the restaurants and bars, and overflowed into the middle of the narrow streets, so that traffic became jammed. A young American who made it possible for Kathleen to extricate herself from a solid wedge of people outside the post-office, wanted her to join forces with him and do 'a round of the sights', as he phrased it.

"It's going to be gay later on, and we might have dinner together." He looked at her approvingly, particularly at the golden hair that was swinging loosely on her shoulders, and introduced a coaxing note into his voice. "After all, we speak the same language! So why not?"

But she smiled at him and shook her head. He went off disappointedly — secretly hoping that he might bump into her again later on — and she fought her way to a shoe shop, where she purchased white shoe cleaner and collected a pair of Joe's small sandals that had been sent to be repaired. Clutching her parcels, and hanging on tightly to her handbag, she got swept down

a side street to the sea-front, and for a time she sat in the sunshine on the sea wall, watching bathers and sun-bathers on the beach, and children crowding round an ice-cream seller. And then when she began to feel she was becoming rather an noticeable figure, so obviously alone and with no fixed plan for her own entertainment, she once more made her way to a pavement café and ordered a pot of tea, which she knew would be fairly undrinkable but which provided her with an excuse for lingering under the café awning.

The sun slipped westwards, and the light over the sea grew less golden and clear, and the sea turned slowly to indigo. The sky became luminous, like a turquoise void, and in it the first stars pricked and the lemon light turned to saffron, and then to flame. Down on the beach the sea lapped, the sun-umbrellas were closed, and the sun worshippers returned to their hotels. There was a kind of brief lull, during which the excitement in the streets seemed to subside a little, the cafe tables emptied, and Kathleen felt very much alone.

In fact, she had never felt so alone in her life —alone and utterly without purpose! She swallowed, thinking of Miguel driving up to the front entrance of the Quinta Cereus with Carmelita beside him, and masses of baggage strapped to the luggage grid, and much more to follow.

Carmelita's new dresses, hats, shoes, underwear .. . All the things she had bought in Paris, for her wedding! Her new life!

Kathleen tore hard at her lower lip, and knew that she couldn't possibly return until it was quite late in the evening. Carmelita would almost certainly remain for dinner, and Inez would ask her all sorts of questions about the past month, and Miguel might feel just a little uncomfortable with Kathleen's eyes watching them.

Or would he expect her to understand . . .?

She felt a sort of deathly misery rush over her and plunged into the street, to be brought up short by the glistening bonnet of a car, which very nearly touched

her. The driver had been proceeding carefully, however, and he was able to bring his car to a standstill on the instant. He lowered his window and looked out at Kathleen, his attractive brown eyes reflecting amazement.

"Miss O'Farrel!" he exclaimed. "What are you doing in Amara at this hour? And don't tell me you're alone!"

He was immaculately dressed for the evening, a white gardenia in his buttonhole, a black cummerbund sitting snugly about his trim waist, diamonds winking in his shirt front and in his cuffs. His hair was black and shining and exquisitely sleek, his concerned smile very white-toothed. He belonged to a world Kathleen was temporarily excluded from — soon it would be permanently! — and she had nothing to say.

The smile vanished, and his concern grew.

"I say, you'd better get inside and let me drive you home! This is no place for a girl at this hour — not a girl alone, anyway! Are you having what you call a half-day? Tomorrow's the day for testa, you know! Tonight they're just getting ready for it!"

"Thank you, Senhor Queiroz," she answered, "but I don't want to go home yet. This is my half-day, and I—I want to make the most of it!"

He frowned.

"But, you can't — not alone! Not you! Unless," the smile returning to his audacious eyes, "you're meeting someone?"

"Yes." Her reply was so swift that it would have made anyone suspicious. "I'm meeting my—my sister and brother, later on! We—we're going to see the sights!"

She had never told a deliberate untruth in her life before, but this one had to be told.. Fernando Queiroz, however, merely looked slightly amazed, and then his whimsically curved lips grew just a shade more whimsical.

"That wasn't the kind of meeting I had in mind " Then he leaned from the car and addressed her more urgently. Other vehicles behind him were sounding their horns, and he knew he couldn't linger. "Look here, I'm going out to dinner, and people behind are getting impatient, but I can't leave you here! I may be the type who kisses a girl in a corridor whether she wants me to or not, but I can't abandon anyone as pretty as you at this hour of the evening!" He held open the door. "Slip in, and I'll drive you to your brother's house! That will be better than your hanging about waiting for them!"

But Kathleen stepped back on to the pavement and shook her head violently.

"No, no, I don't want—!"

And then the honking of horns grew louder, someone pushed between her and the car, and someone else literally thrust her into a shop doorway, and she turned and saw at once that the tiny enclosed space had another open door leading to a street that ran parallel with the one in which the traffic block was causing consternation. To the astonishment of the vendor of postcards and feminine trinkets she dived behind his counter and slipped out into the shadowed side street, and as she tore along it she heard the grinding of gears that told her that the condensation of traffic had been relieved. Fernando had done the only thing he could do, and driven on!

After that, she had no idea for how long, or in what part of the town she wandered. With the shadows deepening moment by moment it would, in any case, have seemed strange to her, and the bright lights that streamed out from café doorways confused her. There were bursts of singing, and conflicting radio programmes reached her ears, and in a tiny square where a fountain played and a statue had been set up to the memory of someone who, at some time or other, had done something for Portugal, some of the younger elements were dancing.

They had an accordion, and someone was strumming a guitar, and there was a great deal of hand-clapping and laughter. A girl with a red rose tucked behind her ear was doing a wild fandango, and dark eyes glistened in the brightening starlight. Kathleen darted back into the tiny alleyway from which she had emerged, and she was wishing desperately that she might find her way back to one of the hotels where she could order dinner, when someone snatched her handbag from under her arm, and she turned to find a pair of those glistening dark eyes regarding her. The bag-snatcher had made off, and his footsteps could be heard racing along the alley, but the man in the square who had glimpsed her golden hair and light dress while his fellow countrywoman was dancing her fandango had moved on soft feet after her, and now he was closing in.

He said something thickly in Portuguese, and then put out a hand to lay hold of her, but she screamed and backed against the wall. He frowned, and then his dark eyes glistened with appreciation, and he made another lunge towards her. He marshalled a few words in English.

"Senhorita shouldn't wander in Amara at night! ..."

And then he was holding her with brutal fierceness, dragging her away from the wall, and the smell of his breath — garlic and wine and stale tobacco —brought a wave of nausea rushing over her. She fought desperately to free herself, Joe's sandals falling to the pavement and the jar of shoe cream, which made a hollow plop, and burst all over her own shoes. Then, as the man's face pressed insistently closer despite her attempt to hold him off, she screamed again — sharply, and in a terrified way this time — and at the same instant her attacker was torn literally and bodily away from her, and she heard his amazed grunt as he landed in the gutter of the roadway.

Then he leapt to his feet, as nimble as some feline creature of the jungle, and with a throaty Portuguese oath he prepared to fall upon Kathleen's deliverer.

But the Conde de Chaves, who had interposed his tall form between Kathleen and the owner of the too brilliant dark eyes, merely looked at him in the deep dusk of the alleyway, and then as the other shrank back ordered him off as he might have done some offensive cur.

"And you can think yourself lucky if you never hear another word of this!" the Conde said, his own Portuguese icy, not thick, with his rage.

The man looked absolutely petrified, and then he grovelled, and slunk away down the alleyway like a seriously alarmed alley-cat, and the Conde turned to Kathleen and grasped her by the arm. For the second time in her life she felt as if her knees would not support her, only this time she had a definitely legitimate reason for believing she might faint away altogether.

But she didn't. The Conde's fingers hurt her almost as much as the less immaculate fingers of her recent amorous attacker, and the ice in his voice must have acted like a douche of cold water on her failing senses. Anyway, like a swimmer in danger of drowning who had suddenly managed to suck in air, she allowed him to lead her away down the silent, deserted thoroughfare, and she didn't really need his caustic, "I should have thought even you might have had more sense!" before he thrust her into his car, which was drawn up at the bottom of the street, to banish the sensation of faintness altogether, and arouse instead the merest beginnings of a dull feeling of resentment.

She sat very still and silent beside him at the wheel, and she knew that she was trembling violently all the time he searched for his ignition key and finally produced it. In the empty spaces at the back of the big car silence seemed to press down and to reach out and cover them, and Kathleen felt her throat tightening up with an emotion that shook her and finally caused two tears to spill over and run down her cheeks.

She wiped them away with a trembling hand, and then, to her horror, more tears followed the first, and

still more. She had lost her handbag, and had no handkerchief, and her gloved fingers were not enough to cope with them, so the Conde passed her his huge, immaculate linen handkerchief.

He asked in a voice that was tight and unlike him:"Did he hurt you?"

"You're quite sure?"

"Quite—sure!"

He uttered a smothered expletive, and then demanded:

"But, why . . .? Why . . .?"

She made a helpless little gesture, and he snatched the handkerchief out of her hand and turned on the roof-light to look at her. Her face was drowned, and her eyes blurred and bitterly unhappy, so he swore outright this time, and then switched off the roof-light and caught her close to him.

"Don't cry, beloved!" His voice shook. "I can't bear it."

"Oh, Miguel!" She turned and buried her face against him, and he shut his eyes as he felt the silken softness of her hair stray over his face, and when she lifted her face for a moment the wetness of her tears streaked his cheek. "Oh, Miguel! . .. If you hadn't come!"

She was shaking so violently that he had to do something to still the trembling, and he turned her face up to his and kissed her long and passionately, and with a kind of desperation, on the lips. She gave a little choked sigh and relaxed against him, and he murmured to her tenderly:

"Forgive me for being such a brute to you, my heart! But if you knew how I felt when I came upon you just now — and realised that it was you yourself who had placed yourself in such a situation of danger! Kathleen, why in the world did you do such a thing? Why were you wandering about aimlessly in the less reputable part of the town at this hour of the evening? Have you no sense?"

"I lost my way," she told him, and added feebly: "Anyone might lose their way!"

"But, why were you in Amara at all?—Alone?" "I was given the afternoon off."

He bit his lip.

"Weren't you also given to understand that I was coming home?"

"Yes." She drew a little away from him. He had no right to put her through this inquisition when he was the one who was to blame for everything — for the fact that she had been in danger, and had still to face up to grim reality! "Yes—your sister told me! And she understood perfectly about my needing the afternoon off!" She bit her lip and looked away from him. "In any case, how did you—f-find me? And why did you come to look for me, or was it just an accident?"

"It was no accident." His voice was stern, and it was plain he couldn't understand her unmistakable shrinking away from him. He tried to draw her back into his arms, but she resisted him strongly. "Fernando Queiroz, who apparently ran into you in the town, came straight back to the quinta and told us you were alone amongst a mass of holiday-makers and testa-excited locals, and that you had said you were meeting your brother and sister-in-law, but he didn't believe it. He said you had run away when he tried to bring you home, and because it all sounded highly suspicious I telephoned your brother. And he, of course, admitted at once that there was no plan to meet either him or Senhora O'Farrel! So—"

"So?" once more rather feebly, and not daring to meet his puzzled, hurt eyes in the gloom of the car.

"So I set out at once to search for you! And mercifully I did find you!"

There was a deep, spreading silence in the car, and she received the impression that he, too, had started to shake a little . . . At any rate, his hand was not in the least steady as he reached for a cigarette and lighted it. The flame of his lighter made it perfectly plain that his fingers were fumbling a little, and when

they crushed out the cigarette almost immediately in the ash-tray she knew that he had no real idea what he was doing.

"Kathleen! If anything had happened to you! . . ." His voice made it necessary for her to steel her heart.

"And what of Senhorita Albrantes?" she asked very quietly. "Didn't she object to your leaving her to come dashing out to look for me?"

"Carmelita?" With a fresh cigarette extracted from the box fitted into the dashboard he turned and looked at her. "But why should Carmelita object? In any case, I left her in Paris — or just outside Paris! With her husband!"

"With her—husband?"

"Of course." His voice was almost deadly quiet, and suddenly deadly calm. "With whom else would she wish to stay when she has only just married him? Carmelita is very much in love, and unlike you she is not the type to fall out of love after a month's separation! As the years pass I imagine her love will grow stronger, and in any case it will never die," the quiet voice vibrating a little, "because we Portuguese are not like you English. Our affections become fixed, and yours do not! That, at least, is what you are striving to make plain to me, isn't it?"

Kathleen wondered whether her experience in the street just now had unhinged her mind a little. What was Miguel saying to her, and why was his tone so reproachful? Bitterly reproachful! . . What was he accusing her of?

"Miguel, I—" And then she gasped. "Miguel, did you say that Carmelita is—is married?"

"That is what I said." But his aloofness was like a wall between them. "She was married in Paris only a few days ago. I would have been home earlier but for the fact that there were difficulties in the way of the marriage until we managed to smooth them out, and after that it was a very hurried affair. Carmelita's

mother did not attend, for she has never approved, but I as the head of our house was able to deputise for her! . . . I know that it was the right sort of marriage for Carmelita, and for that reason I gave it my support. I even flew back to Lisbon shortly after we left here for consultations with various legal people. I was the only one Carmelita could depend upon to act for her."

Kathleen sat as if she had been rendered temporarily stupid, and quite tongue-tied. The Conde went on:

"Years ago, when we were both very young, Carmelita and I were unofficially betrothed to be married. But it would never have done. We were not in love, and we would not have been happy. Also, the family tie was too close. That sort of thing is not good."

Kathleen put her hands up to her face and kept them there. With her remorseful eyes hidden she managed:

"But how was I to know? You were so devoted to her, and she was here so frequently! . . . You told me weeks ago that you had made up your mind to marry!" She lifted her head and looked at him through the dimness with anguished eyes. "And your sister said—"

She could feel him become stiff and alert on the seat beside her.

"Yes? What did my sister say?"

"She said that you—" she moistened her lips—"that you and Senhorita Albrantes had gone to Paris to shop for your wedding! That it had all been arranged ages ago, and everyone knew! She said that you were not a philanderer, but occasionally a pretty face caught your eye, and—and mine had done that!" Humiliation rushed over her as she recalled the afternoon when Dona Inez had said that, "And, naturally—"

"Naturally?" he insisted, no thawing affecting the remote coolness of his tone.

"Naturally, I thought that you—that that was all I did mean to you!" She clasped her hands tightly in her lap, and looked down at them with an abject droop to her shoulders. "How could I be certain of anything else?" she enquired in a whisper.

"You couldn't," he agreed. "I had told you I loved you, but that apparently didn't mean very much! I had told you the period of our separation would be as brief as I could make it, but that, too, didn't mean very much! What sort of a plan did you think I had for you?" the harshness of his voice grating on her. "Did you decide that at the same time that I was making plans for my marriage — in Paris, with Carmelita! —I was also making plans for you? Not such respectable plans, of course—"

"Oh, don't!" she begged him, in a whisper.

She felt his hands on her shoulders, gripping them brutally.

"I would like to shake you, Kathleen," he told her, in a hard tone. "I would like to shake you for your lack of faith, and — perhaps! — your lack of love!"

But that was too much for her. She had endured quite a lot of mental agony that afternoon, and on top of it she had been frightened out of her wits and roughly handled. Now he was obviously capable of handling her just as roughly, and he was cruelly deriding her at the same time. A storm of resentment rose up in her, and she threw off his hands. She put out her hand to the door handle and grasped it, fully determined to leave the car once she had said her say.

"It's easy for you to talk like that," she cried, in a choking voice. "You go away for nearly a month, with someone you admit you were once expected to marry, and expect me to disbelieve your sister when she tells me something that I haven't the slightest reason for disbelieving! You did tell me you loved me, you did kiss me—" catching back an unsteady breath, "but why should a mere nursery-governess place a great deal of importance in that? You also said that I wouldn't understand if you explained, and that you had your obligations . . . You said nothing to give me any confidence while you were away, and you didn't even bother to write to me! I didn't know you were coming back until this afternoon, and I felt I wanted to get right away from the house—"

"But Inez knew I was coming back several days ago! She could have told you then! . . I particularly requested her to do so!"

"Inez!" she choked, and fumbled blindly with the door handle. The tears were once more streaming down her cheeks, and she felt she wanted to die.

But his strong fingers closed over hers and removed the door handle from her clasp, and he drew her forcibly back into his arms. She no longer had the strength to fight, and she sobbed pathetically against the front of his light grey suit.

"Kathleen," he said gently, tenderly stroking her hair, "I realise now that I am entirely to blame! I should have told you more that last night in the garden; at least enough to give you absolute confidence in the future . . . Our future! Oh, my darling," appalled because she had obviously suffered, "men are clumsy, and I seem to have been particularly so! I didn't write because we none of us wanted Carmelita's marriage plans to leak out, and it seemed pointless just to send a few lines and say how much I adored you! That could wait, I thought, until I got back to you, when I would prove my adoration! And I was quite certain you would never have a doubt about it!"

"I didn't until—until! . . ." But she couldn't go on, and he finished for her, grimly:

"Until Inez behaved like a serpent in Eden! She knew very well why I had gone to Paris, but she is angry with me for refusing to allow her to set up an establishment of her own. But now she can do so without delay — any type of an establishment so long as she is away from you! She can go to an hotel straight away if she wishes . . . And take the twins with her!"

"Oh, no," Kathleen begged, "not the twins! They have been my only consolation during this past dreadful fortnight!"

"Then we will keep the twins," smiling at her tenderly but anxiously. He once more put on the roof-light and peered at her gravely. "Darling, how can you

love me when I have failed you so badly? Or perhaps," a little unsteadily, "you don't still love me?"

"I shall always love you, Miguel," she told him, pressing her face against him so that her voice was muffled, which made it seem all the more intense. "That was the dreadful part of it when I — when I thought you weren't serious!"

"Not serious?" He crushed her to him so fiercely that she thought her ribs would crack. "If I am not serious about you no man has been serious about a woman since Time began! I love you with my heart and soul, mind and body, and the one thing I crave is to call you my wife . . . Kathleen, my wife! Oh, darling, darling! . ."

And then wildly he was kissing her, and she kissed him back with the utter desperation of one who had never dared to believe that bliss like this would enfold her again.

Later they drove slowly back to the quinta, but before they did so he astounded her by admitting:

"Your sister and brother knew how I felt about you from the very beginning! Or almost the beginning! That morning after they came to dinner I called on them, and asked your brother's permission to think seriously of you. But I was so uncertain of you at that time that I begged them not to let you know, and to let matters take their course. But if I hadn't exacted that promise from them your sister-in-law Peggy could have put you out of a great deal of agony during these past weeks!" He was furious with himself. "Why did I behave so stupidly."

"Yes, why?" she asked quietly, looking at him sideways. "When I was ready to fall at your feet like an over-ripe peach from the moment you began to treat me like a human being!"

"Oh, sweetheart," he exclaimed, and groaned. "I've been the one at fault all along! But the future will make it up to you!" He glanced at his watch, and realised it was getting late. None of the noises of Amara

penetrated to their quiet retreat. "We must get back and reassure your brother and sister about your safety! And then I think we will invite them over to drink an engagement toast in champagne! And tomorrow I will find out how quickly we can be married . . ."

He felt her nestle shyly into his arms, and kissed the top of her golden head adoringly.

"Sweetheart," he said, huskily, "I promise you that I will make you happy here in Portugal, and any differences in our outlook will never make any difference to our happiness! I will be the most patient and devoted of husbands!"

"And I," she promised shyly, "will never try you too much, by being the sort of young woman you thought me at first! I'm not terribly modem . . . I even think I'd like to obey my husband—always!"

"As an earnest of that," he told her, softly, "you can tell your husband-to-be that you love him more than anything in the world, and give him your precious lips to prove it!"

She looked up into his eyes. The roof-lamp was on, but there was no one to see.

"I love you, Miguel, more than anything else in the world," she whispered, and offered him her lips.

Fully another five minutes passed before he remembered that time was still passing, and started up the car. As they slipped away from the dark alleyway Kathleen was dreamily certain it was the most delectable corner of Portugal.

THE END