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reckoning, she had already walked too far.
    Pulling up on the far side of the bridge, she went down the steep little path among the brambles to join her stepmother.
    “Had a good day?” Evelyn asked.
    Susan nodded.
    “The new colours came in. They’re really beautiful. You’ll love the coral shade. It must have been dreamed up specially for you! And there’s a deep—almost midnight—blue, not dark but full of life,” she explained. “I can’t wait to think up a design for it. There’s a sort of challenge about it—”
    She paused, because the word had conjured up too vivid a memory and the thought of Maxwell Elliott was with her again. Then, ringing out sharply on the hard surface of the road, they heard the sound of galloping hooves. They were almost under the canopy of the bridge, ready to ascend the path, when the horse and rider went over, and she saw it was Hope’s Star with the girl who had been with Max Elliott that day in Kelso in the saddle.
    She held Evelyn back.
    “I don’t want to meet her,” she declared. “Evelyn, I couldn’t!”
    Evelyn put a hand on her arm in deepest sympathy.
    “You needn’t have sold Hope’s Star, you know,” she said kindly. “Sometimes, Susan, you’re too impetuous.”
    “I won’t have time for riding,” Susan said suddenly. “I mean to find a job.”
    “What about the job you’re doing now?” Evelyn asked.
    “That will go with Denham’s.” Susan envisaged her whole world in jeopardy because of this unfortunate take-over bid. “Someone else will do it just as well, I dare say. Perhaps even better. Designing for Denham’s was something different, though, something I always wanted to do, but it wouldn’t be the same for a stranger.”
    “Leave it,” Evelyn advised. “Don’t plunge into anything in a hurry.”
    “I am in a hurry,” she said. “I have to get away!” Evelyn allowed her to help her up the last steep incline on to the road, standing squarely in front of her before they got into the car.
    “Even if I tell you I need you?” she asked. “I can’t do this by myself, Susan. Wherever you went, I would have to consult you. We have both got a share in Denham’s and, therefore, a responsibility.”
    “It would only be drawing out the agony,” she said.
    “You would be halving it for me.” Evelyn’s eyes remained steady on hers. “I wish you would stay till the baby is born.”
    Susan looked back at Denham.
    “You win,” she said. “I’ll stay till it’s all over.”
    “I knew you would,” said Evelyn.
     

CHAPTER FOUR
    THE take-over at Denham’s became the talk of the countryside. Coming so quickly on the heels of the changes at the Fetterburn mill, the two were inevitably linked in the minds of most people, and Susan found herself bombarded with eager questions. Did she know the new owners? Who were they? Where were they eventually going to stay? Had they actually come from New Zealand? And why?
    “This has put the baby completely in the background!” Evelyn laughed when they discussed the new wave of curiosity which ebbed and flowed around Denham House. “I’m not sorry, as a matter of fact. ‘The future Adam Denham’ was beginning to wear a bit thin as the sole topic of conversation at parties! And talking about parties,” she added thoughtfully, “we’ll have to give one while I can still move around with any semblance of decency. It really will be expected of us.”
    Susan, who had finished her breakfast and was ready to set out for the mill, looked round at her in surprise.
    “I do believe you’ll be busy celebrating something or other on the very night of the Big Event!” she predicted. “What would this particular party be in aid of, may I ask?”
    Evelyn’s green eyes lit up.
    “The merger, of course! Everybody’s dying to meet the Elliotts, as you know.”
    Susan could hardly believe what she had heard.
    “You mean to bring them here? To invite people to meet them at Denham?”
    “Why not?”