Wolf Solent was quick enough to take advantage of this change of mood. He moved across to her, bent down over her chair, and scratched Matthew’s head. “I thought I’d like to go over and see where the grave is.” His words were low-pitched but without any emotional stress. His intonation could hardly have been different if he had said, “I think I’ll go to the Abbey presently.”

Selena Gault gave a deep sigh, but it seemed to Solent like a sigh of relief rather than sadness.

“Quite right, quite proper,” he heard her murmur, with her head held low and her hands occupied in smoothing out the shawl beneath the body of the somnolent cat.

“The best thing you could do,” she added.

Since she said nothing more and persisted in keeping her head lowered⁠—a position which accentuated the enormity of her upper lip and the dark sallowness of her face⁠—Wolf began to feel as if he were an impertinent intruder stroking the pet animal of some proud, secretive being whose peculiarity it was to prefer beasts to men.