Royal Purple by Susan Barrie Page A

glass!”
    “Well, what is there lovelier than a piece of flawless glass? If you’ve ever collected crystal you ’ll know what I mean.”
    “Don’t tell me that in addition to being able to own a c ar like this, you have a passion for display cabinets which you keep well filled ? And hidden away somewhere very secretly!”
    She saw his beautiful white teeth—whiter than blanched almonds—as he put back his head and laughed delightedly, uproariously.
    “Remind me to show you one of them later this afternoon when we reach our destination.” Then he pointed out to her the beauties of some half-timbered houses as they flashed through a typical Surrey village. “What a lot of charm there is over here in England! I suppose that’s the reason why one always wants to come back to it, why one never completely forgets any of it.”
    “What do you mean by ‘reach our destination’?” she asked. “Where are we going?”
    “Wait and see,” he replied softly. “Wait and see!”
    “How long have you been over here in England? You haven’t always lived here, have you?”
    “Oh, most certainly not. I be g an life in Seronia, was educated here in England, spent a lot of time in America, and now I’m back again in England. ”
    “You spent a lot of time in America?” For some reason that intrigued her. The Countess has a grandson in America ... ”
    “Has she?” he said, and turned the c ar off the main road and into a narrow off-shoot of a lane that in summer smelled heavily of honeysuckle and wild roses, and even at this early season was a pleasant green tunnel running between high banks and overhung by the delicate green lacework of new young leaves.
    At the end of the lane they turned into another, and here the banks were even steeper, and the road itself badly rutted by recent heavy rainfalls and what looked like the wheels of a farm tractor. The wheel tracks ended at a white gate beyond which was an obvious farmyard, with tall chimneys rising between the bare- branched trees at the far side of it, and a television aerial showing up clearly against the pale blue sky. A noisy cackling of geese greeted the arrival of the car, and a couple of hens flew up and alighted on the pillars of the gate.
    Lucy peered ahead of her through the windscreen with interest, taking note of the sloping line of the roof between the gaps in the trees, and the twisted shapes of the chimneys. It seemed to her that the house was very old, and it was so tucked away that, on the broad main road they had left, it would have been easy to believe that such a dwelling-place—even if one was searching for it—did not e x ist. And as Paul slipped out from behind the wheel and opened the white gate, and they drove through into the farmyard, she could see that the house was a d welling-ho use, not just a cluster of farm buildings. Th e re was a white door, and a path leading up to it, and a leaded casement window was swinging open. Some flowery curtains were waving in the freeze, and beneath the window, on a sort of brick-paved terrace, there was a white-painted garden seat.
    “Well?” Paul said, as he held out a han d to assist her to alight. His eyes were bright and alive a n d questioning, and his hand was very firm.
    “That is what I should say to y o u,” Lucy replie d . “Where is this? And why are we here, in a n y ease? Don’t tell me we’re calling on friends of yours?” a little diffidently, in case that should turn out to be the very thing they were doing.
    But he shook his head.
    “Nothing of the sort.” He took her by the elbow and guided her towards a little wicket gate that admitted them to the terrace where the whit e- painte d garden seat was pla ce d. Lucy’s eyes grew wider and wider as she took in the ordered appearance of the garden, with its fla g ged paths and yellow cl u mps of d affodils growing in the shade of spreading branches. There was a pocket-handkerchief lawn with a sundial in th e middle of it, and a