Free Assignment in Brittany by Helen MacInnes

that is more like you. Once your pride has recovered, you will be really very glad. You didn’t love me.” It wasn’t a challenge; it was a quiet statement of fact.
    “I agreed to marry you.”
    “That was before—” She stopped. “You see, Bertrand,” she continued, “I knew all the time. I knew.” Her tone puzzled him, but his face was cold and expressionless. “I haven’t toldyour mother yet,” she finished lamely.
    “Which means you think I shall tell her? That will be slightly difficult, considering the fact that my mother doesn’t want to see me.” He could imagine Madame Corlay’s delight when she found that her son had failed her again. The Corlay and the Pinot farms would never be joined. The old quarrel about that dovecote on the boundary line would never be solved. “I think you had better finish what you’ve begun,” he ended quietly.
    It was with considerable relief that he saw Albertine approaching them, her black shawl tightly drawn round her thin shoulders, her precarious white cap soaring so securely from the tightly bound hair. It was strange that anything so fantastic was neither shaken nor blown from her head as she walked, that she could turn so quickly from Anne to him and then back to Anne without even seeming to be aware of balancing a starched cylinder on top of her crown. She greeted them with a sparse remark about supper. It was a command rather than a suggestion. He was glad to follow her into the kitchen, glad that Anne had refused to eat with them. It was only after he had entered the room that he wondered if he ought to have taken her back across the fields to her farm. But the strange thing had been that Anne didn’t seem to expect that: she had moved so quickly away by herself. And stranger still was the fact that Albertine, who obviously still regarded them as engaged to be married, had most certainly not expected it.
    Albertine served him a supper which was identical with his breakfast, except that a piece of cheese was substituted for the pork, and there was a small glass of cider. Henri was tactfully non-existent, and he noted that Albertine had only set one place at the table. They must eat after he had gone. It was rathera formal arrangement for such an informally managed farm. For the third time that day he found himself wondering just what kind of chap this Corlay had really been. Of one thing he was certain: there was much more in Corlay that he had ever imagined. I don’t believe I am going to like him at all, he thought suddenly.
    He finished his supper quickly. Upstairs he imagined himself examining and arranging that stack of books and papers. He might find something there to solve these peculiar questions in his mind.
    But when he went upstairs, the dusk thickened in the room, and Albertine had conveniently forgotten to fill the lamp with oil. There were no candles in the candlestick on the small table beside the empty bookcase. In spite of his annoyance, he had to laugh. Albertine certainly had her little ways. He undressed quickly, alternately admiring the low cunning of women and wondering where he was supposed to wash. A small, ugly-looking cabinet pulled open at last and showed a basin with a pail concealed underneath, and a tap which turned on water from a container hidden above. It was the sort of thing which small yachts and steamers like to produce to comfort their passengers for the lack of running water. It was no doubt one of Corlay’s innovations, for he could think of no one else here who would have bothered about it. Anyway, it meant he could wash. In the growing darkness of the room he miscalculated the swill of the water and felt it drip over the floor. Albertine, he thought, would—oh, damn Albertine. Of all the people he had met so far she was perhaps the kindest, certainly the most self-sacrificing; and yet she worried him the most. Partly because he realised that if Albertine were to become suspicious,then his difficulties would be