Free To Love and Be Wise by Josephine Tey

on autumn leaves——"'
    'All right, all right. "—her large brown eyes wary and doubtful. With a graceful movement of resolution she stepped into the room, her tiny heels tapping lightly on the parquet floor——"'
    'No heels.'
    'What d'you say?'
    'No heels.'
    'Why not?'
    'She has just been playing tennis.'
    'She could have changed, couldn't she?' Lavinia said with a touch of asperity that was foreign to her.
    'I don't think so,' Liz said patiently. 'She is still carrying her racket. She came along the terrace "swinging her racket lightly".'
    'Oh. Did she!' Lavinia said explosively. 'I bet she can't even play ! Where was I? "She stepped into the room—she stepped into the room, her white frock fluttering"—no; no, wait—"she stepped into the room"—Oh, damn Sylvia!' she burst out, flinging her chewed pencil on to the desk. 'Who cares what the silly moron does! Let her stay in the blasted window and starve!'
    'What is the matter, Aunt Vin?'
    'I can't concentrate.'
    'Are you worried about something?'
    'No. Yes. No. At least, yes, I suppose I am, in a way.'
    'Can I help?'
    Lavinia ran her fingers through the bird's-nest, found the pencil there, and looked gratified. 'Why, there's my yellow pencil.' She put it back again in her hair-do. 'Liz, dear, don't think me interfering or anything, will you, but you're not by any chance getting a little—a little smitten with Leslie Searle, are you?'
    Liz thought how like her aunt it was to use an out-of-date Edwardianism like 'smitten'. She was always having to modernise Lavinia's slang for her.
    'If by "smitten" you mean in love with him, be comforted. I'm not.'
    'I don't know that that's what I do mean. You don't love a magnet, if it comes to that.'
    'A what! What are you talking about?'
    'It isn't a falling in love, so much. It's an attraction. He fascinates you, doesn't he.' She made it a statement, not a question.
    Liz looked up at the troubled childish eyes, and hedged. 'Why should you think that?' she asked.
    'I suppose because I feel it too,' Lavinia said.
    This was so unexpected that Liz had no words.
    'I wish now I had never asked him down to Trimmings,' Lavinia said miserably. 'I know it isn't his fault—it isn't anything he does —but there's no denying that he is an upsetting person. There's Serge and Toby Tullis not on speaking terms——'
    'That is nothing new!'
    'No, but they had become friends again, and Serge was behaving quite well and working, and now——'
    'You can hardly blame Leslie Searle for that. It would have happened inevitably. You know it would.'
    'And it was very odd the way Marta took him back with her after dinner the other night and kept him till all hours. I mean the way she appropriated him as her escort, without waiting to see what the others were doing.'
    'But the vicar was there to see Miss Easton-Dixon home. Marta knew that. It was natural that he should go with Miss Dixon; they live in the same direction.'
    'It wasn't what she did, it was the way she did it. She—she grabbed .'
    'Oh, that is just Marta's lordly way.'
    'Nonsense. She felt it too. The—the fascination.'
    'Of course, he is exceedingly attractive,' Liz said; and thought how utterly the cliché failed to convey any quality of Leslie Searle's.
    'He is—uncanny,' Lavinia said, unhappily. 'There is no other word. You wait and watch for the next thing he is going to do, as if it were—as if it were a sign, or a portent, or a revelation, or something.' She used the 'you' impersonally, but caught Liz's eye and said challengingly: 'Well, you do , don't you!'
    'Yes,' Liz said. 'Yes, I suppose it is like that. As if—as if the smallest thing he does had significance.'
    Lavinia picked up the chewed pencil from the desk and doodled with it on the blotter. Liz noticed that she was making figures-of-eight. Lavinia must be very troubled indeed. When she was happy she made herring-bones.
    'It's very odd, you know,' Lavinia said, mulling it over in her mind. 'I get the same "kick" out