Beau eyed her guilty face with something like amusement, but Innes said soberly: "We should have asked you before. You are not going away before the Dem., are you?"
"Not if I can help it."
"Then will you come to tea with the Seniors next Sunday?"
"Thank you. If I am here I should be delighted."
"My lesson in manners," said Beau.
They stood there on the gravel looking up at her, smiling. That was how she always remembered them afterwards. Standing there in the sunlight, easy and graceful; secure in their belief in the world's rightness and in their trust in each other. Untouched by doubt or blemish. Taking it for granted that the warm gravel under their feet was lasting earth, and not the precipice edge of disaster.
It was the five-minute bell that roused them. As they moved away, Miss Lux came into the room behind, looking grimmer than Lucy had ever seen her.
"I can't imagine why I'm here," she said. "If I had thought in time I wouldn't be taking part in this God-forsaken farce at all."
Lucy said that that was exactly what she herself had been thinking.
"I suppose there has been no word of Miss Hodge having a change of heart?"