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she looked at closer quarters. Her eyes, which were vividly blue, were shining with obvious delight and it wasn’t difficult to imagine the subject of their conversation. Hope’s Star had a new and enthusiastic owner.
    Fergus hesitated, not quite sure whether they should exchange greetings on the strength of their recent transaction at Springwood or not, but Susan pulled him away. The foyer was crowded; it was easy enough to avoid Maxwell Elliott,
    On the way back to Yairborough Fergus said:
    “I think I ought to come to Edinburgh with you tomorrow.”
    Susan hesitated.
    “I’d like to say ‘come’, but I know you’re far too busy to take another day off,” she answered, at last. “Thanks for the offer, though. I’m really looking forward to Evelyn coming home,” she added. “I had no idea how much I had missed her these past few months.”
    “She must have been very busy in London.”
    “I think she wanted time to straighten things out,” Susan suggested thoughtfully. “It must have been a terrible blow to her when Father died, yet she kept on working for Denham’s. That was important to her, I think, and it probably helped. You know, ‘working your despair away’.”
    “Talking about work,” he said, “are you going back to the mill?”
    “Of course! I only allowed myself half a day.” She was relieved at the prospect of several hours’ engrossing employment to keep her thoughts at bay. “I’ll probably work late, to get as many orders as possible off before the end of the month. I’ll want to have time for Evelyn, too,” she added. “We’ll have so much to talk about.”
    “You don’t think she’s coming home to stay, then?”
    “I don’t know.” Susan pushed her hair back from her forehead in a characteristic gesture as she considered the point. “I wish she would, though it might be difficult to replace her in the London office. She has everything at her fingertips down there and, after all, she’s had years of experience of the export trade. Quite honestly, Evelyn has carried her fair share of Denham’s. My father always acknowledged that, and so do I.”
    “I suppose he left her comfortably off,” Fergus reflected. “Apart from the house, I mean.”
    “We share Denham’s,” Susan agreed, “but naturally Evelyn has the controlling share.”
    He looked up sharply at that, but didn’t make any comment, and soon they were through Fetterburn and driving in between the ivy-covered gateposts of Denham House.
    Fergus unhitched the horse-box while she went into the hall to collect her personal mail. She couldn’t really expect another communication from Evelyn, but the thought was in the back of her mind, all the same, as she sifted through the small pile of advertising pamphlets and samples which invariably came her way.
    “There’s nothing,” she said automatically as the housekeeper came through from the kitchen regions to greet her. “Nothing I hadn’t expected.”
    “I thought there might have been another letter from Mistress Denham,” Nellie Burgess observed, “but you’ll know her plane time and that will be enough. I expect. Everything’s ready for her,” she went on with an eagerness surprising in anyone so phlegmatic as Nellie. “I’ve given her the sun room, as you said, in case she might feel too upset coming back to so much emptiness in the house. It’s lost I feel myself, sometimes, without your father about the place, and she’s bound to feel it, poor soul! Only here once since he died, she was, and that was right at the beginning, when she came to pack her clothes. It makes a body think, I’m sure. Ay, it makes you think!”
    Whatever Nellie had to think about, Susan was sure that Evelyn would be well looked after on her return to Denham House. Nellie had worshipped Evelyn ever since her marriage to Adam Denham, although it was Nellie who had helped to bring Susan up in the years when Adam had struggled on alone. It couldn’t have been easy for