She was leaning back, her hair blown from her temples by the soft, salt-laden breeze, and she looked neither young nor pretty in the waning light, but exceedingly weary.
"Do you like your work?" Julian enquired with extreme abruptness, and a sudden, genuine desire for information.
"At the College? Very much indeed."
Her tone was guarded, he felt.
"I mean the whole thing. What made you take up this sort of thing? Tell me about it."
He almost heard her hesitate before she answered with careful lightness:
"Oh, I had to do something, and I should dislike teaching children—and do it very badly. I trained as a shorthand-typist, and am really qualified for a secretary. I rather like doing shorthand."
The acuteness of his disappointment actually surprised Sir Julian. He realised that he had made the most tentative of efforts to get into touch with one whom he vaguely thought of as a kindred spirit, and that he had been lightly and unmistakably rebuffed. He kept silence, making a pretence of absorption in his driving.
Unexpectedly, Miss Marchrose made a sort of inarticulate sound of interrogation.
"Sir Julian?"