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his best interests. He ought never to have dismissed the only secretary he has ever had who was capable of looking after his affairs.’
    ‘Isn’t Mr Carmody any good?’
    ‘No. He is not. And I shall never feel easy in my mind until Mr Baxter is back in his old place.’
    ‘What’s wrong with Mr Carmody?’
    ‘He is grossly inefficient. And,’ said Lady Constance, unmasking her batteries, ‘I consider that he spends far too much of his time mooning around you, my dear. He appears to imagine that he is at Blandings Castle simply to dance attendance on you.’
    The charge struck Millicent as unjust. She thought of pointing out that she and Hugo only met occasionally and then on the sly, but it occurred to her that the plea might be injudicious. She bent over the spaniel. A keen observer might have noted a defensiveness in her manner. She looked like a girl preparing to cope with an aunt.
    ‘Do you find him an entertaining companion?’
    Millicent yawned.
    ‘Mr Carmody? No, not particularly.’
    A dull young man, I should have thought.’
    ‘Deadly.’
    ‘Vapid.’
    ‘Vap to a degree.’
    ‘And yet you went riding with him last Tuesday.’
    ‘Anything’s better than riding alone.’
    ‘You play tennis with him, too.’
    ‘Well, tennis is a game I defy you to play by yourself.’
    Lady Constance’s lips tightened.
    ‘I wish Ronald had never persuaded your uncle to employ him. Clarence should have seen by the mere look of him that he was impossible.’ She paused.
    ‘It will be nice having Ronald here,’ she said.
    ‘Yes.’

    ‘You must try to see something of him. If,’ said Lady Constance, in the manner which her intimates found rather less pleasant than some of her other manners, ‘Mr Carmody can spare you for a moment from time to time.’
    She eyed her niece narrowly. But Millicent was a match for any number of narrow glances, and had been from her sixteenth birthday. She was also a girl who believed that the best form of defence is attack.
    ‘Do you think I’m in love with Mr Carmody, Aunt Constance?’
    Lady Constance was not a woman who relished the direct methods of the younger generation. She coloured.
    ‘Such a thought never entered my head.’
    ‘That’s fine. I was afraid it had.’
    A sensible girl like you would naturally see the utter impossibility of marriage with a man in his position. He has no money and very little prospects. And, of course, your uncle holds your own money in trust for you and would never dream of releasing it if you wished to make an unsuitable marriage.’
    ‘So it does seem lucky I’m not in love with him, doesn’t it?’
    ‘Extremely fortunate.’
    Lady Constance paused for a moment, then introduced a topic on which she had frequently touched before. Millicent had seen it coming by the look in her eyes.
    ‘Why you won’t marry Ronald, I can’t think. It would be so suitable in every way. You have been fond of one another since you were children.’
    ‘Oh, I like old Ronnie a lot.’
    ‘It has been a great disappointment to your Aunt Julia.’
    ‘She must cheer up. She’ll get him off all right, if she sticks at it.’
    Lady Constance bridled.
    ‘It is not a question of . . . If you will forgive my saying so, my dear, I think you have allowed yourself to fall into away of taking Ronald far too much for granted. I am afraid you have the impression that he will always be there, ready and waiting for you when you at last decide to make up your mind. I don’t think you realize what a very attractive young man he is.’
    ‘The longer I wait, the more fascinating it will give him time to become.’
    At a moment less tense, Lady Constance would have taken time off to rebuke this flippancy; but she felt it would be unwise to depart from her main theme.
    ‘He is just the sort of young man that girls are drawn to. In fact, I have been meaning to tell you. I had a letter from your Aunt Julia, saying that during their stay at Biarritz they met a most