"Then you don't like it here?"
"Like it? Madam, 'like' is a very pallid word. What if you were offered everything you ever wished for, all tied up in pink ribbons and laid on your door-step? What would your reaction be?"
"So," she was staring into the fire, "that's the way of it?"
"Yes. Or it would be if—" He stooped to reach for another piece of wood. The fire was threatening to die again.
"What is the flaw in the masterpiece?" she asked quietly.
"Rupert. He's changed. In the old days he was one of us; now he's a stranger. We're amusing to have around, someone to look after, but I have a feeling that to him we don't really exist. We aren't real—" Val floundered trying to express that strange, walled-off emotion which so often held him in this grown-up brother's presence. "Things like this 'Bluebeard's Chamber' of his—that isn't like the Rupert we knew."
"Did you ever think that he might be shy, too?" she asked. "He left two children and came home to find two distrustful adults. Give him his chance—"
"Charity!" Ricky ran lightly downstairs. "Why didn't Val tell me you had come?"
"I just dropped in to inquire concerning your patient."
"He's better-tempered than Val," declared Ricky shamelessly. "You'll stay to dinner of course. We're having some sort of crab dish that Lucy seems to think her best effort. Rupert will be back by then, I'm sure; he's out somewhere with Sam. There's been some trouble about trespassers on the swamp lands. Goodness, won't this rain ever stop?"