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“Careful!” he admonished warningly. “You nearly took a toss!”

Fenella tore herself from his grasp.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded hysterically, resenting his presence too much to think of thanking him for his help. “And—” for the first time noticing the book he held—“where did you get that from?”

He answered her questions in reverse order.

“Your cousin showed it to me,” he explained mildly. “And I’m here because a telephone call came through for him and I thought it only a matter of decent manners to leave him to it.”

“Oh yes,-of course,” Fenella agreed hurriedly. “But that book—it’s
mine
!” and she held out her hand for it Martin, however, showed no inclination to hand it over. Coolly he flicked through the pages of the sketch book and Fenella felt all the resentment she had been feeling focus itself on this stranger who was probing with obvious curiosity one of the most private joys of her life —the ability to draw what she saw all about her so that it had life—movement.

“Yes, I know,” Martin admitted. “Trevose told me so. He fetched the book because he wanted to show me the sketches you’d made of an earlier craft he once had.” He fluttered through the pages and found the sketch, presenting it to her to bear out his explanation.

Fenella was silent, the memory of the day she had made that drawing still vivid in her mind. The intense blue of sky and sea, the warmth of the sun as Anthony made the final preparation before they put to sea. No further back than last year, that had been. A day without cloud of any sort. A day to remember and cherish all the more because it wasn’t very likely that it would ever be repeated.

“Yes, I see. But did Anthony tell you that you could look through the book?” she challenged. “Because if so, he had no right to. The book is
mine”
And again Fenella held out her hand for it.

This time Martin laid it down on a table close to Fenella’s hand.

“I appreciate you feeling that I’ve taken a liberty,” he said slowly. “But I can’t regret that I have because—” he paused. “Because, from what I’ve seen, you’re just the person I’ve been looking for.”

“Oh?” Fenella said suspiciously.

“Yes, I want to find someone to illustrate the book I’m on at present,” Martin explained. “I don’t mean in the old-fashioned way—having perhaps half a dozen full page pictures—but little sketches round the margins. I expect you know the sort of thing I mean—perhaps a pool or rocks or gulls. Perhaps part of the boat—anything that would give colour to the reading matter.”

“I’m afraid I’m not interested,” Fenella said coldly.

“No? May I know why not?” Martin asked with interest.

Fenella shrugged her shoulders.

“I think you overrate my abilities,” she explained. “I’m not a professional artist, you know. I just scribble for my own pleasure.”

“You mean you’ve had no training?” he asked incredulously, and picking up her book again, turned at random to a page on which an excited spaniel puppy was chasing, ears streaming, after a panic-stricken rabbit.

Involuntarily Fenella smiled. Amber had always been so sure that
this
time she would catch her quarry—but she never did. Now, a sedate old matron, she was content to lie in the sunshine and could hardly be persuaded to take even the shortest walk.

“No, I’ve had no training except what I had at school,” she explained. “So you see it would be quite absurd for me to take on such work!”

“I don’t agree,” Martin said stubbornly. “You’ve got just the touch I want—and surely I’m the best judge of that!”

“More than likely,” Fenella acknowledged coolly. “But I’m still not interested, Mr. Adair."

She turned away from him, determined to put an end to the interview even though it meant going out into the garden again, but, with a quick, lithe movement, Martin blocked her way.

“Look, this is important to me, so you must forgive me if I'm rather insistent. You obviously enjoy sketching, and unless you’re different from anyone else I know, you must surely appreciate the compliment that’s entailed when you’re offered payment for your work. Or didn’t you realise that I meant to pay you? Is that the trouble?”

“I didn’t give the matter a thought one way or the other,” Fenella said airily.

“No? Then that isn’t the reason you’re turning me down,” Martin concluded. “So I wonder if you’d mind telling me just what is?”

Put as directly as that, Fenella was in something of a quandary. Why had she rejected the suggestion so promptly? After all, she did love drawing, Martin seemed to think she could reach the standard he needed, and it would be pleasant to have some money she’d earned by her own efforts. Yet to refuse to work with Martin had been instinctive. Because there was something of a mystery about him? That surely should have stimulated her interest in him! Then because Anthony had said he’d rather she avoided Martin?

“Miss Calder, how old are you?” Martin’s voice broke across her thoughts.

“Nearly twenty-two—” Fenella replied automatically, and then, suspiciously: “Why do you ask?”

“I wanted to know if you are legally able to make your own decisions,” Martin explained. “It would seem that you are—or aren’t you, for some totally different reason?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Fenella declared defiantly.

“No?” Martin regarded her gravely. “Simply, it seems to me that you live a peculiarly sheltered life for this day and age. And I wondered—”

“Whether I'm just not capable mentally of making decisions—or whether I’m not allowed to?” Fenella asked, dangerously quiet.

“That’s about it,” Martin admitted without, however, saying which of the two possibilities he had in mind.

Fenella drew a deep breath and faced him, her chin in the air.

“I think I shall have to tell you the truth, Mr. Adair,” she said deliberately. “Though I warn you, I don’t think you’ll like it!”

There was the faintest flicker of some emotion or other in Martin’s eyes. Apprehension? Amusement? Indifference?

Fenella didn’t know, but whichever it was, it stirred an indefinable reaction in her. He was quite outrageous and he deserved to be taught a lesson. Well, she’d do just that!

“It’s really quite simple,” she told him. “I don’t want to work with you or for you, Mr. Adair, because I don’t like you!”

Martin nodded, completely unruffled.

“I thought it might be that. Just—Dr. Fell?”

“Just—Dr. Fell,” Fenella agreed.

“Fair enough! A pity, but just one of those things. However, there’s one encouraging thing about it—”

“What?” Fenella demanded sharply before she could stop herself.

“Oh, just that I can at least arouse some emotion in you, even if it’s dislike,” he explained cheerfully. “Now, if you’d been entirely indifferent to me, I should have been very much put out! As it is, who knows? Anything could happen! Why, you might even come to—like me!”

And with a mocking salute and a provocative grin, he went out through the garden door, leaving Fenella with the ineluctable knowledge that though she’d stuck to her guns, he’d none the less left her with the conviction that she’d come off second best.

By five o’clock most of the guests had gone, and by five-thirty even the last of the stragglers had taken their leave.

Mrs. Trevose, her charming hostess-smile fading a little, announced her intention of taking off her shoes and putting up her feet.

“And another time we give a party, it’s going to be in the winter,” she announced firmly. “Then it can be indoors. Summer is too difficult and too extreme. Either it’s too wet and cold or too hot out of doors. Don’t you agree, Anthony?”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“If
we give another party,” he said without enthusiasm.

Mrs. Trevose looked at him thoughtfully.

“You don’t think it was a success?”

“I don’t think Fairhaven contains the ingredients for a successful party,” Anthony replied somewhat evasively as, with a quick, impatient movement he undid the knot of his tie and the top button of his shirt. “That’s better!” he said with satisfaction. And then, after a moment’s hesitation: “Don’t wait dinner for me, Aunt Gina. I’m going to take
Wild Rose
out. I want to try that new mains’l.”

“Oh, very well,” Mrs. Trevose said resignedly. “It’s a cold meal anyway. Are you going as well, Fenella?” Normally, Fenella’s answer would have been an eager affirmative, but now she immediately shook her head. One reason was certainly that she had seen Anthony’s quick frown at Mrs. Trevose’s question, and pride alone would have prevented her from saying she’d go with him when she so obviously wasn’t welcome. But, to her surprise, there was a stronger reason for her refusal. She didn’t want to go. And that was something she couldn’t remember ever having happened before. Not want to go out with Anthony! How incredible. And yet it was true. For perhaps the first time in her life she felt the need to be alone. Beyond the reach of even the most kindly of curious eyes—and there had been plenty of those this afternoon as well as some that weren’t so kindly. Not all had been directed at her. Anthony and Rosemary had come in for their share—and more than likely he, too, was feeling the need for solitude. Fenella felt a stab of understanding and sympathy for him born of a fellow feeling.

“Not if you don’t mind, Anthony,” she said, trying to sound mildly apologetic. “I’ve got quite a few things to do—”

She saw the look of relief that flickered briefly over his face and knew that she had said the right thing.

“O.K.,” he said casually. “Be seeing you.”

They heard him going upstairs two at a time, the opening and closing of doors and drawers in his bedroom overhead and then, a little later, a rapid descent of the stairs. Obviously Anthony had changed into less formal clothes and was now all set to seek relaxation.

“You should have gone with him, Fenella,” Mrs. Trevose said with a trace of reproach.

“Why?” Fenella asked bluntly. “He didn’t want me— and I didn’t want to go with him.”

Mrs. Trevose sighed.

“All the same, Anthony is in such a queer mood—I think he’d have been better with some company—”

“Well, I’m sorry, but he can’t have mine,” Fenella said firmly. “I want to do something quite different, and really, Aunt Gina, Anthony is quite old enough to look after himself. So am I for that matter,” she added.

Mrs. Trevose found herself feeling just a bit breathless. Never before had Fenella said anything like that! Why, it almost sounded as if she found Anthony’s company boring—

“And now,” Fenella went on briskly, “what about going up to your room for a little rest? It’s on the cool side of the house and you’ll be more comfy than in the drawing room—”

Fortunately Gina Trevose’s sense of humour came to her rescue. She was, she appreciated, being told firmly not to make a nuisance of herself, though she knew perfectly well Fenella would never have told her that in so many words. But the intention was there—and perhaps the reminder was deserved. It was, after all, one of the tragedies of life that no matter how much experience one might have, how well one could see dangers ahead, it was never possible to run other people’s lives for them. And perhaps, she admitted, it was just as well that was so. You couldn’t always protect the young, however dear, so the sooner they learned to stand on their own feet, the better—

She let Fenella help her out of her dress and into a thin dressing gown and lay down on her bed. Really, she thought, as she settled herself comfortably, it
was
pleasant here. Fenella had been quite right. Her eyes closed—

Her charge made comfortable, Fenella changed into green linen shorts and a plain white workmanlike shirt— Anthony had never been tolerant of frills. She thrust her bare feet into a shabby old pair of sandals and stole cautiously out of the house. It wasn’t likely, with Aunt Gina in her room and Anthony already gone, that anyone would ask where she was going but she wasn’t taking any risk. So often, at the most inconvenient moment, Cook or the housemaid would appear suddenly with a problem that really they could solve themselves with a little effort—

She made her way to the garden gate where she had first met Martin Adair. There was no sign of him or anyone else about today, and for a moment Fenella paused. There was the first whisper of an evening breeze —Anthony would be able to make quite decent way in
Wild Rose.
As for herself—she hesitated. If only one didn’t have to pass Miss Prosser’s house on the way down to the harbour—

She squared her shoulders. What if Miss Prosser did see her? What if she tried to stop and question her? It would be just too bad because, for once, if Miss Prosser started being inquisitive, she’d be told in so many words to mind her own business—and never mind the consequences !

But as she passed the house there was no sign of Miss Prosser, although she wasn’t sure if the upstairs curtain didn’t move slightly. Down by the harbour she saw with relief that
Wild Rose
with Anthony aboard was well out in the estuary and beginning to find the breeze as he won clear of the two protecting headlands.

As it happened, there was no one else about either, and Fenella experienced the first taste of the freedom and solitude she felt so desperately in need of. She found it in full measure a few moments later when she bent to the oars of her own little cockleshell of a dinghy, presented to her on her fourteenth birthday by Anthony and rather grandiloquently named
The Golden Hind
with all due ceremony and a bottle of ginger beer.

The tide was almost at the full, so estuary and river looked at their glittering best. At dead low tide there would be only a sluggish channel and wide mud flats, but even that could be rather fun. One could get out of the skiff and walk beside it in water that barely reached one’s ankles.

With the flow still slightly in her favour Fenella could have made quite good time without any very great exertion, but despite the heat of the day, she found satisfaction in making an all-out effort. It released some of the tensions that had built up during the afternoon.