Norah found her way mechanically to the tea-table and made her fingers frantically busy in rearranging the parsley round the sandwich dish. On one side of her loomed the morose countenance of the Major, on the other she was conscious of the scared, miserable eyes of Vladimir. And above it all hung that . She dared not raise her eyes above the level of the tea-table, and she almost expected to see a spot of accusing vulpine blood drip down and stain the whiteness of the cloth. Her aunt’s manner signalled to her the repeated message to “be bright”; for the present she was fully occupied in keeping her teeth from chattering.

“What did you shoot today?” asked Mrs. Hoopington suddenly of the unusually silent Vladimir.

“Nothing⁠—nothing worth speaking of,” said the boy.

Norah’s heart, which had stood still for a space, made up for lost time with a most disturbing bound.