“Young women?” she echoed. “But you’re a young woman yourself, aren’t you?”

Hannah replied loftily:

“You forget that I’m a nurse. And,” she added, “I don’t happen to be particularly glamorous.”

“I’m sure that Dr. Mackay thinks you’ve a kind of glamour all your own,” Charlotte could not refrain from submitting it as her opinion. “As a matter of fact, I think he thinks you’ve a good deal of glamour in that fetching cap and apron you’ve unearthed from your suitcase.” Hannah coloured rosily, and as a result acquired a very definite healthy glamour.

“For all I know Dr. Mackay is a very much married man,” she said, revealing that there had been moments in the course of the past forty-eight hours when she had turned the matter over in her mind. “And in any case, he’s a very hard-headed Scotsman,” she added.

Charlotte smiled, and returned to the task of setting a breakfast tray for Richard Tremarth. Hannah did not neglect to notice that she added a pale pink rose to the tray – a fresh pink bud that would have opened up nicely by the morning. And the container she selected for it was a delicate crystal vase that she had unearthed from a china cabinet in the drawing room, a cabinet which housed only a few extremely costly items of china and glassware.

“You don’t think,” Hannah suggested, “that Mr. Tremarth already has far too many flowers in his room? Or will have when we off-load them all on to him again in the morning! ” Charlotte merely glanced at her but said nothing.

Hannah smiled, and let Waterloo out at the French window as part of the final ritual before settling down for the night.

Charlotte carried Richard’s breakfast tray to him while Hannah was still enjoying a leisurely bath in one of the far from up-to-date bathrooms at Tremarth, following an absolutely undisturbed night during which the patient had slept soundly and peacefully. He was looking so much better – and so very much more like the Richard Tremarth Charlotte had felt strangely antagonised by when he made himself known to her in the bar of the Three Sailors – that she could hardly believe he hadn’t also recovered his memory when she set the tray down on the bedside table, and prepared to swing the table across the bed.

“It’s a wonderful morning,” she declared, giving him quite a radiant smile, “and you look as if you’ve had a good night. Have you?”

“A perfect night. At least – ” he frowned a little as he attempted to recall it – “I must have slept like a log, for I don’t even remember dreaming. And I’ve had some pretty lurid dreams lately.”

“Have you?” She poured him a cup of tea, and held it out to him gently. “That must have been beastly. I hate lurid dreams.”

He smiled at her quizzically.

“To look at you one could only imagine you having the nicest dreams… cool and crisp, like that pink linen dress of yours. And by the way, it doesn’t fight with your hair, does it?”

“Ought it to?”

“Well, it is red hair, isn’t it?” He put his sleek dark head a little on one side and regarded her with undisguised interest. “And although I don’t know much about women’s clothes, and that sort of thing, I’ve always understood that redheads have to be careful when it comes to the choice of colours. After all, red has a habit of clashing with other colours.”

She smiled at him demurely while she tucked a pillow in behind his shoulders.

“I don’t have very much trouble choosing things to suit me,” she told him.

He looked vaguely anxious, noticing for the first time the rose on the tray.

“I haven’t offended you, have I?” he asked.

“Calling you a redhead, I mean _” He lightly touched the stem of the rose, while his black brows bent together. “For some reason your hair fascinates me I’ve a kind of feeling it’s linked up, in a way, with my past – whatever that may have been like!”

“Then you don’t remember anything clearly yet?” she asked, concern immediately entering her tone.

He shook his head. The expression in his strange eyes worried her.

“Not a thing! I wish I could, I – ”

“Yes?”

“You tell me I ought to know you, and yet I don’t. It’s – infuriating!”

“I wouldn’t let it worry you,” she said, in the wonderfully soft, feminine voice she had adopted towards him since his accident – such a contrast to the voice she had used when she declined to sell him Tremarth. “It’s not of any great importance at the moment, and you will remember.”

“Yes; but when?”

“Dr. Mackay says the kind of amnesia you’re suffering from clears itself up quite suddenly.” She was disturbed because she couldn’t give him any more convincing answer than that.

“And is this Dr. Mackay a good doctor? Is he a local doctor?”

“Yes. Hannah thinks he’s quite remarkably good.”

“Hannah?” Once again his brows crinkled painfully. “Oh, yes, the young woman who wears the nurse’s uniform but tells me she’s not properly qualified… But I’d say she’s extremely efficient all the same. I like Hannah,” he concluded in a more abstracted tone, as if it was not important, anyway.

“And what about Miss Brown?” Charlotte asked. “She’s terribly attractive, and surely you must remember her?” This was deliberate probing on her part, and she waited a trifle breathlessly for the answer. But when it came it told her nothing.

“Yes, she is attractive, isn’t she? She tells me she’s been my secretary for the past six months.”

“But you can’t remember working with her?”

“I can’t remember working with anyone… But you tell me I’ve an office in London. Have you been on to it?”

“Yes. They confirm that Miss Brown worked for y ou… B ut she did not add that the capacity in which Claire Brown worked for Richard Tremarth had seemed a trifle vague over the telephone, and the extremely competent young woman who had dealt with the direct question made a little late on the afternoon of the day before had seemed unwilling to commit herself on the subject of the actual duties for which Miss Brown received a salary. Hannah, who had set afoot the enquiries, had done her utmost to elicit more information, but it seemed that, apart from the fact that Miss Brown was at present on holiday, no member of Tremarth’s office staff was willing to describe her usefulness in detail.

If, indeed, she had any particular usefulness… which, from the tone of voice of the young woman on the telephone, seemed doubtful.

“I’m sure you’re looking forward to seeing Miss Brown again this morning?” Charlotte suggested with a blank, unrevealing face, despite the fact that he appeared confused, as she watched him dealing somewhat unenthusiastically with his scrambled eggs. “She’s staying at the Three Sailors, you know.”

“Is she?” But there was neither interest, nor a marked lack of it. He felt his unshaven chin. “Do you think I can deal with this this morning?”

“Of course, if you feel like bothering. You’ve got an electric razor, haven’t you?”

“If all my possessions have been removed from the Three Sailors, then I have.”

Charlotte, who had been moving towards the window to draw back the curtains still further and admit some more of the bright morning sunshine, turned in some surprise.

“Then you do remember that you stayed at the Three Sailors…! Can you also remember that you and I once had quite an important conversation there, and that it was concerned in the main with this house? In fact, if it hadn’t been for this house you would never have been at the Three Sailors! ”

“Oh, really?” He looked at her with polite interest, but if she had thought to catch him out – and she decided almost immediately that the attempt was unworthy – she was doomed to disappointment. He explained in the same rather colourless voice that her friend Hannah had explained all about the local inn, and she had been careful to give him details of the length of time he stayed there and the quantity of his luggage that had been removed from the inn. “I must have been planning to make quite a prolonged stay there,” he mused thoughtfully.

Later that morning the doctor arrived from the village, and after sitting with him for about twenty minutes and giving him a brief physical examination delivered himself of the opinion that the patient’s recovery would be aided by a little fresh air, and certainly by leaving his bed for a few hours.

“I suggest that you sit in a chair in your room to-day, and perhaps to-morrow you’ll feel like walking downstairs and out into the garden. Miss Woodford is fortunate in having such an enchanting garden, and if you like watching the sea then you won’t get a better view of it then you will from her terrace,” he said in an encouraging way. “I wouldn’t mind being an invalid at Tremarth myself if it meant that I could sit and look at the sea.”

But his eyes actually rested upon Hannah as he spoke, and for no other reason than that they were distinctly quizzical she flushed brilliantly.

No sooner had the doctor departed than Tremarth announced his intention of leaving his bed, and getting shaved and dressed. He also said he was going downstairs and into the garden, and not waiting for the following day.

Charlotte instantly looked alarmed and protested that he was not fit, and that the doctor’s advice should be followed to the letter; but her invalid merely requested her politely to leave the room, and suggested that perhaps Hannah would help him to dress. He was not exactly wobbly on his feet, but it would accelerate things if she lent him a hand.

“But there’s no hurry – ” Charlotte protested.

Richard Tremarth began to look slightly like a hunted man.

“There is a good deal of hurry,” he asserted. “When Miss Brown arrives I have no intention whatsoever of entertaining her up here, and outside in the garden she, too, will get the benefit of the sea air.” He grinned sideways, almost boyishly, at Charlotte. “I don’t feel my own man lying in a bed with a girl like Miss Brown sitting feeding me grapes and offering to read extracts from the daily newsprint aloud to me,” he confessed. “Besides, it isn’t fair to her.”