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RV 277 "Not the ventilating system in the Alderneys' stable, Dexter."

"Oh, well; can't that be arranged? If it can't, put it down to profit and loss. I never enjoyed anything more than my swim this morning in the pool. You've managed to get the water warmed to exactly the right temperature."

He slipped out to join Nona on the putting green below the terrace.

Yes; everything was all right; he was evidently determined that everything should be. It had been the same about Michelangelo's debts. At first he had resisted his wife's suggestion that they should help to pay them off, in order to escape the young man's presence in New York; then he had suddenly promised the Marchesa to settle the whole amount, without so much as a word to Pauline. It was as if he were engrossed in some deep and secret purpose, and resolved to clear away whatever threatened to block his obstinate advance. She had seen him thus absorbed when a "big case" possessed him. But there were no signs now of professional preoccupation; no telephoning, wiring, hurried arrivals of junior members or confidential clerks. He seemed to have shaken off "the office" with all his other cares. There was something about his serene good humour that obscurely frightened her.

Once she might have ascribed it to an interest—an exaggerated interest—in his step-son's wife. That