Miss Elton told me that there were certain posts advertised in the papers and she would get those papers and we would look together, for she had made up her mind that she was not going to be caught either.

We looked through the advertisements. "Your age is against you," she said. "Who would look at a girl of sixteen as a governess or a companion? You will have to pretend you are older."

"I shall be seventeen next year."

"Even seventeen is very young. I think you might just pass as eighteen if you draw your hair right back from your face. If you had a pair of spectacles ... wait a moment." She went to a drawer and brought out a pair of glasses. "Try these on." I did and she laughed. "Yes, that would do the trick and with your hair back you look quite severe ... all of twenty ... perhaps twenty-one or two."

"I can't see a thing through them."

"They can be obtained with plain glass. One thing I am certain of. Your obvious youth would debar you from getting anything. You can't possibly hope to do that for two years at least."

"Two years! But I am sure he is planning my wedding for my seventeenth birthday."

I was able to laugh at my appearance in Miss Elton's cloak, with scraped-back hair and glasses.

Miss Elton then said she would get the glasses for me. She would say someone at the house wanted them just as a shield against the winds, which gave her a headache. She had become very sympathetic to me since Francine left, and that had drawn us close together.

She did manage to acquire the glasses, and when I put them on I thought how Francine would have laughed to see me.

Miss Elton looked for posts and found several that might suit her. She was, after all, an experienced governess of mature age. The more we talked, the more I began to see the hopelessness of my situation and laughed at myself derisively for thinking that a pair of spectacles would make up for a lack of experience.

It wasn't going to work, I knew, and even Miss Elton's will to proceed in her own search flagged a little.

"Perhaps it is early days yet," she said. "Perhaps something will turn up."

While we were thinking of all this a major event took place in Greystone Manor. Aunt Grace eloped with Charles Daventry. Perhaps if I had not been so involved in my own affairs I should have seen it coming. There had been a marked change in Aunt Grace ever since Francine had gone. There had been rebellion in the air and although it had taken her some years to come to the decision, Aunt Grace had finally broken the shackles with which her father had bound her. I was delighted for her.

She just walked out one day and there was a note for my grandfather saying that she had at last decided to live her own life and would soon be Mrs. Charles Daventry which was what she should have been ten years before.

My grandmother had been in on the secret of course, and I wondered how strongly she had urged Grace to act as she did.

My grandfather was incensed. There was another meeting in the chapel at which he denounced Aunt Grace. She was an ungrateful child, such as the Lord abhorred. Had He not said "Honour thy father and thy mother?" She had bitten the hand that had fed her and the Almighty would not turn a blind eye to such dishonouring of her obligations.

I said to Cousin Arthur afterwards: "I think my grandfather sees God as a sort of ally. Why does he presume that God is always on his side? Who knows? He might be for Aunt Grace."

"You must not talk like that, Philippa," he replied sombrely.

"Why should I not say what I feel? What has God given me a tongue for?"

"To praise Him and honour your betters."

"You mean my grandfather and perhaps ... you, Cousin Arthur?"

"You should have a respect for your grandfather. He took you in. He gave you shelter. You must never forget that."

"Grandfather doesn't, and he is certainly determined that I shall not either."

"Philippa, I will not mention what you have said to your grandfather, but if you continue to talk in this vein you would compel me to."

"Poor Cousin Arthur, you are indeed my grandfather's man. You are the Holy Trinity—you, my grandfather and God."

"Philippa!"

I looked at him scornfully. Now you really have something to tell my grandfather.

He did not, in fact. Instead he became rather gentle towards me, and my distaste for him grew in proportion to the passing of time.

I went to see Aunt Grace in the shack near the graveyard. She was visibly happy and did not look like the same grey woman who had inhabited Greystone Manor.

I embraced her and she looked at me apologetically. "I wanted to tell you, Philippa," she said, "but I was afraid to tell anybody ... except Mamma. Oh, my dear, I am sure if you and your sister hadn't come I should never have had the courage. But ever since Francine went I have been thinking of this. Charles has been urging me for years, but somehow I could never quite make up my mind to ... and then when Francine went I suddenly thought, Enough is enough ... and then what seemed impossible gradually began to seem quite easy. I only had to do it."

Charles kissed me and said, "I have to be grateful to you and your sister. How do you think Grace is looking?"

"Like a new woman," I answered.

Aunt Grace was full of plans. They had Charles's room in the vicarage and they must live in that for a while. It meant that my grandfather would be furious, but he had no jurisdiction over the vicar. The living was a matter for the Bishop and the Bishop had never—"only don't mention a word of this," begged Aunt Grace—liked our grandfather. They had been at school together and there had been a feud between them. As for the vicar he had never been on very good terms with Greystone Manor, and with the Bishop's backing he didn't have to be.

Grace babbled on excitedly and I was so happy for her.

"I shan't be able to see my mother," she said, "because I have been forbidden the house and she can't come out, but you'll take messages for us, won't you, and you'll tell her how happy I am."

I promised I would.

It was a pleasant afternoon sitting among the stone figures and drinking tea which Charles brewed for us. In Grace's happiness I forgot briefly my own difficulties and when I did remember them the realization that I could talk to Aunt Grace comforted me.

"Yes," she agreed, "he is going to try to marry you to Cousin Arthur."

"I will never marry him," I said. "Francine was determined not to and so am I."

Her face clouded when I mentioned Francine. I went on: "I do worry about her. I haven't heard from her for so long. I can't understand why she doesn't write."

Aunt Grace was silent.

"It is strange," I went on. "Of course I always knew it might be difficult to get the letters ... she being so far away."

"How long is it since you heard?" asked Aunt Grace.

"It's more than a year now."

Aunt Grace was still silent but after a while she said: "Philippa, I wonder if you would bring some of my things for me. You'll have to smuggle them out of the house. I expect you'll be forbidden to see me."

"I will disobey those orders," I promised.

"Be careful. Your grandfather can be a very harsh man. You cannot stand on your own yet, Philippa."

"I'm going to have to, Aunt Grace. I may try and find some post where I can earn my living. Miss Elton is helping me."

"Oh ... has it gone as far as that?"

"It has to—because of Cousin Arthur."

"It's the best thing. You have to start a new life. I used to think of taking a post myself, but I always lacked the courage. You want to put the past behind you, everything ... just everything, Philippa. Then perhaps you will find some good man. That would be the best. Forget everything ... and start again."

"I would never forget Francine and our life together."

"You will find the way. And Philippa, there is something I want you to bring to me. It is my commonplace book. It is in the brown trunk in the first of the attics. There are newspaper cuttings and all sorts of things in it. It's a red book. You'll see my name written on the fly-leaf. I should like to have it. Do go and look for it. You cannot fail to find it."

The earnestness in her eyes, the manner in which her hand shook and the sudden darkening of that glow which her newly found happiness had brought her ... all that might have warned me that I would find something startling in the commonplace book.

As soon as I returned to the house I went up to the attic. I opened the trunk and there was the book for which she had asked. I opened it. Her name was written inside just as she had said, but it was the newspaper cutting which caught my eye. The words formed themselves into sentences and they made terrible pictures for me.

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

I looked at the date of the paper. It was over a year old. There was another cutting.

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

The paper slipped from my hands. I just rocked there on my knees while my mind conjured up pictures of a bedroom in a hunting lodge. Rather grand, she had described it. There would be many servants. I pictured her lying in a bed with the handsome lover beside her ... and there would be blood everywhere ... my beloved sister's blood.

So this was why I had not heard. They had not told me, and there had been no mourning for her; my dear, beautiful, incomparable sister might never have existed.

Dead! Murdered! Francine, the companion of my happy days. The months of anxiety had culminated in this. Always before there had been hope. No longer could I call at the Emms' cottage to be bitterly disappointed because there was no news. How could there be news ... ever again?

They had said she was his mistress. But she was his wife. They had been married at Birley Church before they had crossed the Channel. She had written to tell me that. They had a son. Cubby. Where was Cubby? There was no mention of him.

"Oh Francine," I murmured, "I shall never see you again. Why did you go? It would have been better to have stayed here ... to have married Cousin Arthur ... anything ... anything rather than this. We could have gone away together. Where? How? Anywhere ... anything rather than this."

I tried not to believe it. It must be someone else. But it was his name ... and hers. Had she told me the truth about the marriage? Had she thought that I would want it to be respectable and proper, conventional and right? Yes, I should have done. But she need not have lied to me. She could have omitted to mention the ceremony. And then there was the child. What had become of the child? Why didn't the paper mention him? It was such a brief cutting, as it would be in the English papers. Just a little of the usual trouble that cropped up in those turbulent Germanic states remote from peaceful England. The only reason it was mentioned at all was because the woman involved was English.

Was that all I was to know? Where could I find out more?

Clutching the red commonplace book under my arm, I ran to the vicarage. Aunt Grace was waiting for me among the statues. She must have known that I would come. I just held the book out, looking at her.

"I didn't tell you," she stammered. "I thought it would upset you too much. But now ... I thought ... she is older. She ought to know."

"All this time I have been waiting to hear from her... ."

Aunt Grace's lips trembled. "It's terrible," she said. "She should never have gone."

"Is there anything else I should know, Aunt Grace? Are there more cuttings ... more reports ... ?"

She shook her head. "Nothing. That was all. I read it and cut it out. I didn't show it to anyone. I was afraid someone would see it. Your grandfather perhaps. But people don't take much notice of foreign news."

"She was married to him," I said.

Aunt Grace looked at me piteously.

"She was," I insisted. "She wrote and told me so. Francine would not lie to me."

"It must have been a mock marriage. Those sort of people do things like that."