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Evelyn buttered herself another slice of toast. “It’s the sort of thing we should do. They’re strangers, even though they’re Elliotts of Fetterburn.”
    “I can’t imagine Maxwell Elliott accepting ” Susan returned. “He’s too bent on snapping up property and making money. His wife might, though. She seems a bit lonely, riding around on her own all the time.”
    “He hasn’t got a wife,” Evelyn said quietly. “Grisell is his niece.”
    “Are we talking about the same person? They didn’t look like uncle and niece to me.”
    Evelyn laughed.
    “You’re so utterly prejudiced about Max,” she declared. “Grisell is a bit of a problem, I understand, and Max has made himself responsible for her until her father gets here.”
    “No mother?”
    “No. That may be part of the problem.”
    “You find out things so easily, Evelyn !”
    “I’m interested in people. I like to have smiling faces all around me!”
    Evelyn was very gay these days, sure of her position now at Denham House, at least until her child was born, and Susan couldn’t grudge her this happiness.
    Sometimes it seemed that Evelyn’s happiness had been short-lived all her life. Her mother had died when she was five years old and her father had been killed in a train accident two years later. Brought up by doting grandparents, she had known their loving care for a year or two, but at their deaths she became the responsibility of an uncle whose wife was a chronic invalid. And so Evelyn had become a maid-of-all-work in a household where happiness was hardly known. At sixteen she had decided on a secretarial career. Her aunt was in a private nursing-home by this time and her uncle, a dedicated business man, helped her to find her first job.
    Once she was on her own Evelyn had put the past behind her and, two jobs later, she had found herself at Denham’s London office, where she had eventually married the boss.
    “I must go,” Susan said hurriedly. “I can’t afford to be late.”
    “I’m sure Max won’t be standing behind the door waiting for you,” Evelyn smiled.
    “I punch the clock,” Susan returned. “I’m not any different from anyone else these days.”
    She had always believed in getting to the mill on time. The office opened at eight-thirty and she was generally there with a few minutes to spare. It gave her time to glance at her mail before the others came in or to sort through a batch of patterns which might have been left over from the day before.
    Engrossed in her work, she heard the main office door open and close again, but she supposed it to be one of the overseers from the factory floor who often looked in to see if she had arrived. With the pattern-string in her hand she rose to go in search of Aaron Spottiswode, who had been foreman at Denham’s for as long as she could remember.
    The door between her own office and the larger, outer one where the typists worked was of reeded glass, and instantly she became aware of a man’s shadow thrown in bold relief against it. She stepped back, her heart beating faster, her lips suddenly dry as she waited for him to come in.
    It was foolish, she thought, to be standing there staring at a shadow, but for a moment she felt powerless to take the initiative because she had a good idea who it might be.
    Maxwell Elliott was standing in the outer office when she finally opened the door. His back was towards her, but he turned immediately.
    “I had no idea you got up as early as this,” he said with a hint of amusement in his voice. “But now I see that I should have expected conscientiousness, at least.”
    “If you’ve come to catch the office staff getting off to a bad start I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed,” she told him coldly. “They begin work at half-past eight and it’s twenty-five past now. They’ll be coming in at any minute.”
    He lifted a ruler from one of the typing desks.
    “I came to have a word with you,” he said. “About Denham’s