She looked her best in the clothes that she most often wore, riding-breeches and a high-necked wool jumper, under an open tweed riding-coat.
Her head was bare and her hair, which was flaxen and very pretty, was just shoulder-length and attractively curled at the ends.
Valentine wondered, as she wondered almost every day of her life, what Humphrey would think if he could suddenly walk into Coombe now, after twelve years.
Supposing he were able to come back?
The place was hardly altered at all. There was a painting of himself, that his mother had insisted upon having done from a photograph after his death and that now hung above Valentine's desk.
She had never liked it, and thought it a bad painting—shrill and crude in colouring and with only a superficial resemblance to the original. But she had never had it moved, even after the death of her mother-in-law.
It was almost the only new thing in the room except for the rose-patterned chintzes. The year before Humphrey died, and for several years afterwards, the covers had been blue, with a violet stripe.
Valentine remembered them clearly.
Humphrey, if he could come back, would expect to see that familiar colouring. And the Spanish leather screen that now stood opposite to where she was sitting had been in one of the spare bedrooms in Humphrey's day. It had been moved to its now permanent station in the hall when the General complained of a draught behind his habitual armchair.
The spaniel, Sally, had grown old and fat. She was nearly fourteen.
Humphrey had probably never seen her at all. But he had had two spaniels himself—both of them dead, now.
It was the people over whom Humphrey might well hesitate longest.
Jess, when he saw her last, had been a baby of five years old, backward of speech and not particularly pretty. He had not taken a great deal of notice of her, perhaps because he was disappointed that she had not been a boy.
Impossible that he should ever recognize that baby in the tall, sprawling, graceful figure of the seventeen-year-old Jess, whose artless use of a candidly vermilion lip-stick only served to emphasize her appearance of young, open-air innocence.
Humphrey would wonder who the officer was and would dismiss him with a phrase, "Not one of us, what."
Reggie? He'd know Reggie, of course, but the arthritis had only begun a year or two before Humphrey's death. Reggie hadn't been a cripple on two sticks before that. Seated, though, as he was now, he wouldn't have changed so very much. Humphrey would think he was on a visit. It wouldn't cross his mind that Reggie could be living at Coombe, paying a very small contribution to the household expenses and bringing with him his dog.
And then, thought Valentine as she had often thought before, there was herself. Humphrey would look first of all at her. She was the person he had cared for most in his life.
He had left her with brown hair—now it was heavily streaked with a silvery grey. There were lines round her eyes and her mouth, and she had lost her colour. She used a pale-rose lip-stick, whereas she had used none at all in his lifetime. Her figure had not altered: she was as slim as she had been at twenty. And yet there was a difference. It was a soft, pliant slimness still but it was, indefinably, not that of youth. One realized that, looking at Primrose or Jessica.
All the same, Humphrey would know her immediately. He would find her altered only in the sense of having grown older. To this conclusion Valentine always came, in her habitual fantasy of Humphrey's return to the home from which he had been carried, in his coffin, twelve years earlier.
Long ago she had been startled by, and had subsequently answered, the question with which her own heart had confronted her.
If that impossible return could take place, if Humphrey could come back, a living man, from the grave, would it awaken happiness in her?
Valentine knew without any doubt that the answer was No.
Humphrey had never given her either happiness or unhappiness. At best, their relationship had achieved a little pleasure, at most, some discontent.
Valentine, having known both happiness and unhappiness in her earliest youth, could still, at moments, vividly recall either.
"Oh, that'll be absolutely wizard!" cried Jess in her high, gay voice. "I don't suppose I shall be here myself much longer, I'm expecting to join up any minute practically—but it'll cheer up poor darling aunt Sophy like anything. She adores soldiers. D'you suppose they'll ever take her for a walk?"
"The Colonel's a terrific walker."
"Gosh!" said Jess thoughtfully. "Fancy a colonel."
She did not elucidate the exact grounds of the passing sensation of awe that had evidently prompted the exclamation.
It might have been the thought of the Colonel's rank, or his probable age, or his walking proclivities.
Lieutenant Banks said:
"The Colonel's the most marvellous man that ever lived," in quite inexpressive tones. Then at last he got up.
"Well, thanks frightfully, Lady Arbell."
"Must you go? Why don't you stay to tea?" Jess asked.
"It's terribly kind of you but I can't. I'm supposed to be back at three o'clock and it's ten minutes past four."
"Come on Sunday then. I expect I'll still be here. You could have a bath if you liked, and then tea, and then supper."
The young man's eyes turned towards Valentine.
She ratified Jessica's invitation.
"Thanks frightfully, Lady Arbell."
"Bring one or two other chaps with you, and we might play games or something," cried Jess.
"Yes, do," Valentine said.
Lieutenant Banks said that this was simply terrific, and absolutely marvellously kind, and completely okay so far as he knew but might he ring up?
Jess picked up aunt Sophy, holding her under her arm so that the puppy's legs all dangled in the air, and conducted Banks to the glass doors and through them.
There they remained, silhouetted against the light, and there they could be heard from time to time in apparently animated discussion punctuated by peals of laughter.
Valentine smiled involuntarily, exhilarated by the spontaneity of the sounds.
She looked at the same time rather apologetically towards her brother who was never in the least exhilarated by the behaviour of very young people, but quite the contrary.
General Levallois, however, was apparently not thinking about Jess and the officer.
He met his sister's eyes meditatively.
"Lonergan," he said. "Wasn't that the name of that feller in Rome?"
"Yes."
"Funny thing, if it should turn out to be the same one."
"It isn't an uncommon name, in Ireland."
"There aren't any uncommon names in Ireland," said the General.
"How did you remember, Reggie? You were in India at the time."
"Mother wrote reams, as she always did. Anyway, I never forget a name. You've never seen or heard of him since, have you?"
"Never," said Valentine.
She smiled.
"It was only a week, you know."
"What was only a week?" demanded Jess from behind her.
"A very silly business," declared the General.
"That happened more