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drew back a little to see what effect that had had on Fenella.
    “The Lancings!” Fenella exclaimed, startled by the coincidence of having spoken of the family so recently to Aunt Gina.
    “Yes, you remember them, surely! You used to play with them when you came for holidays here when you were little. Hugh and Dennis, the twins, Sheila and Lynn. And, of course, Rosemary!”
    “Of course I remember them!” Fenella declared.
    “I’ve never forgotten them. It was just that I was surprised. I am glad! They were always wonderful to me, although I was so much younger that I must have spoilt their games! It seems ages since they went away.”
    “It is,” Miss Prosser agreed. “All of ten years. Sir Geoffrey was appointed governor of one of those islands in the Indian Ocean and he took the whole family with him. But they never sold the house. Now he’s completed his term of office and Mrs. Dingle, the housekeeper, has just told me that she’s had instructions to get the house ready at once. Of course, the three eldest are married and they’ll be bringing their children, so it’s going to be quite a full house! Mrs. Dingle’s worried whether she’ll be able to get enough help or not.”
    Fenella sighed.
    “It’s horrid, the way one drifts away from old friends,” she remarked regretfully. “Rosemary and I wrote to one another for a time, but it got longer and longer between letters and then we stopped. Somehow or other people never seem quite real when they’ve been away for a long time!”
    Miss Prosser sniffed.
    “ She’s real enough—you can take my word for that! But changed a bit from what you remember, I shouldn’t wonder.”
    “Yes, I suppose so,” Fenella agreed, refusing to take notice of the unpleasantly meaning tone. “But she’ll probably find me still more changed than she is because I’ve grown up since we last met.”
    “So you have,” Miss Prosser admitted thoughtfully. “Yes, that may come as quite a shock to her!”
    Fenella laughed.
    “Hardly that, Miss Prosser!” she protested. “She may be surprised because one forgets that other people don’t stand still, but that’s all.”
    “Maybe you’re right,” Miss Prosser conceded, and then, so suddenly that Fenella jumped. “I wonder what Mr. Anthony will have to say about her coming back?”
    “Anthony?” Fenella spoke more sharply than she had intended, for every instinct told her to beware—that Miss Prosser’s venomous tongue would make capital out of anything she said. Yet to have refused to answer would have been even worse—“He will, I’m sure, be delighted. They were great friends, years ago.”
    “They were more than that!” Miss Prosser cackled triumphantly. “Didn’t you know, Miss Fenella, Rosemary Lancing was the girl that jilted Mr. Anthony?”
    Fenella’s mouth went dry. Naturally, Anthony had never told her this and nor had Aunt Gina, but instinctively she knew that it was the truth—
    “And so you think Mr. Anthony will be delighted that she is coming to Fairhaven again?” Miss Prosser purred, her head on one side.
    Fenella looked her straight between the eyes.
    “Miss Prosser, you really must not read something into my words that I didn’t intend to convey," she said, trying to assume the tone of chilly reproof she had heard Aunt Gina use on similar occasions. “You’re referring to an old story which we never discuss. And you should remember that to a man like my cousin Anthony, whatever the past may have held, the fact that Rosemary is a married woman—”
    “Was, you mean!” Miss Prosser’s queer eyes riveted themselves on Fenella’s face so that she might not miss a single fleeting expression. “Her husband died over a year ago. She’s a widow!
    And with a vicious snap, she shut the window in Fenella’s white face.
     

CHAPTER II
    HER errand to the newsagent completed, Fenella went on down the hill to the harbour, and sat on a low wall in the sunshine.
    From here there was a