"And I take it that you yourself are pleased?" Lucy said, a shade dashed by this matter-of-fact catalogue.
"Oh yes. Rick is the only person in the world except my grandmother who can make me do things I don't want to do. That will be very good for me."
She looked at Lucy's doubtful face, and her great eyes sparkled.
"And of course I like him very much," she said.
When the diplomas had been presented, Lucy had mid-morning coffee with the Staff and said goodbye to them. Since she was leaving in the middle of the morning no one was free to come to the station with her. Henrietta thanked her, with undoubted tears in her eyes this time, for the help she had been. (But not in her wildest imaginings would Henrietta guess how much the help amounted to.) Lucy was to consider Leys as her home any time she wanted to come and stay, or if she ever wanted a lecturer's job again, or if-or if-
And Lucy had to hide the fact that Leys, where she had been so happy, was the one place in the world that she would never come back to. A place that she was going, if her conscience and the shade of Rouse would let her, to blot out of her mind.
The Staff went to their various duties and Lucy went back to her room to finish packing. She had not spoken to Innes since that so-incredible conversation on Saturday morning; had hardly seen her, indeed, except for the moment when she had taken her diploma from Miss Hodge's hands.
Was Innes going to let her go without a word?
But when she came back to her room she found that word on her table. A written word. She opened the envelope and read
Dear Miss Pym,