"What was she like?"
"To tell you the truth," Hubert replied, after some hesitation, "she reminded me a little of Ann Browning. Not of Miss Browning's social class, of course; a few years younger, eighteen or nineteen, perhaps; dark hair instead of fair. But with something of the same air about her. Pretty, I should say; though when I saw her last she was no longer pretty."
Vicky clenched her fists. Her thoughts ran round and round again, the same scratchy groove like a caught phonograph needle.
What a situation! What a situation! What a situation!
Two
On the morning of the following day — Wednesday, the twenty-third of August — Mr. Philip Courtney walked out of The Plough Hotel into the sunshine of Regent Street.
Philip Courtney was at peace with all the world.
It was eleven o'clock. He had eaten a late breakfast, smoked the first, most satisfying pipe of the day, and glanced leisurely through the papers. He had nothing on his mind until evening, and an easy job then.
Cheltenham struck him as being as pleasant a town as any in England. He liked its white-painted, geranium-bed dignity; its spacious, shady streets; its suggestion of Bath without the latter town's cramped and dingy lanes. He would go for a stroll before lunch.
And so he was hesitating on the sunny pavement when a voice spoke behind him.