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go and try to part your uncle from his encyclopaedias for long enough to eat his dinner,' she said without much hope in her voice.
    'You go ahead, I'll clear the table in the dining room.' Conscience made Marion offer. If she put the coffee tray in the drawing room a few minutes before Reeve and Willy were ready to go in, as soon as they were safely installed she could return and clear the dining room table, and she need not come face to face with either of them.
    The first half of her plan worked nicely. She had just deposited the coffee tray when her straining ears caught the sounds of exodus from the dining room. She slipped hurriedly back to the kitchen, thankful for once for the twist in the passage which hid her from sight, and as soon as the drawing room door closed she slipped out again with an empty tray in her hands, to clear the dinner table. The first intimation she had that the second half of her plan had gone awry was when Reeve spoke from behind her.
    'I believe these are your property.'
    It was a good job the tray of crockery was rested on the table, otherwise it would have gone the way of the cutlery earlier, with disastrous results. He must have returned to the dining room almost immediately. Perhaps he had forgotten something, maybe the evening papers. Willy had left them on one of the chairs. She drew a deep breath, and turned reluctantly to face him.
    'Your sketching is very good.' Was he being condescending? Marion eyed him suspiciously, but he went on smoothly, 'Did we disturb the hare; as well as the artist?' So he recognised her drawing for what it was. He held it out to her, loosely rolled, and bound with something soft and brown. Her hair ribbon.
    'How did you...?' Marion ignored his question and asked one of her own. How had he come to be in possession of her drawing and ribbon? The last time she had seen them, they were both floating downhill, pulled by the suction from the rising helicopter.
    'Naturally I retrieved them for you,' Reeve told her coolly. 'Since it was our fault you lost them, it was up to us to get them back for you.'
    'It was you who dropped from the helicopter?' Suddenly she remembered the machine hovering, and the dark figure descending from it. She swallowed convulsively, seeing again in her mind's eye the spider-thin thread by which he had hung. 'What a risk to take, for the sake of a sheet of paper, and a strip of velvet ribbon!' The words came out before she could stop them, but she could not help it. She shivered at the thought that anyone would go to such lengths for such a trivial reason.
    'There was no risk.' He spoke with calm self-assurance, and Marion felt a mounting irritation with the man. His quixotic action had put her at a disadvantage, and what was worse, she was now under an obligation to him, and the feeling rankled. 'Though perhaps I should have left the velvet ribbon on the hill,' he eyed her speculatively, 'it seems a shame to confine such lovely hair.'
    'It gets in my eyes when I'm sketching.' Marion coloured furiously. How dared he criticise her mode of dress!
    'If you'd waited a little longer on the hilltop, you could have had it back right away.'
    'There wasn't time—I had to get home, and it's a long walk.'
    'Yes, we saw you go.' Saw her run away, like the frightened hare? Marion gritted her teeth and remained silent. 'Diana, striding the uplands,' he murmured, and her eyes sparked angrily.
    'My name's Marion,' she snapped, and realised too late that she had given him just the information he wanted.
    'Oh, you've cleared the table.' Mrs Pugh broke the tension, that felt to Marion as if it might snap with an audible crack. 'Of course,' the housekeeper clicked her tongue vexedly, 'you told me you would, I just forgot.' She bustled up to the table and the loaded tray. 'I might as well take this while I'm here, and you can fold up the cloth. Was there anything else you wanted, Mr Harland?' She looked enquiringly from Reeve to Marion, patently wondering what