And, of course, it was rather naughty of him, but then again, very
likely he couldn't help it. It had just come on him when he wasn't
thinking; and who could help being in love with Fanny? You could be in
love with people quite innocently and hopelessly. There was no sin where
there wasn't any hope.

And perhaps Fanny was innocently, ever so innocently, in love with him;
or, if she wasn't, Horatio thought she was, which came to much the same
thing; so that anyhow poor Ralph had to go. The explanation they had
given, Barbara thought, was rather thin, not quite worthy of their
admirable intelligence.

It was Friday, Barbara's fifth day. She was walking home with Ralph
Bevan through the Waddingtons' park, down the main drive that led from
Wyck-on-the-Hill to Lower Wyck Manor.

It wouldn't be surprising, she thought, if Fanny were in love with her
cousin; he was, as she put it to herself, so distinctly
"fallable-in-love-with." She could see Fanny surrendering, first to his
sudden laughter, his quick, delighted mind, his innocent, engaging
frankness. He would, she thought, be endlessly amusing, endlessly
interesting, because he was so interested, so amused. There was
something that pleased her in the way he walked, hatless, his head
thrown back, his shoulders squared, his hands thrust into his coat
pockets, safe from gesture; something in the way he spun round in his
path to face her with his laughter. He had Fanny's terrier nose with the
ghost of a kink in it; his dark hair grew back in a sickle on each
temple; it wouldn't lie level and smooth like other people's, but sprang
up, curled from the clipping. His eyes were his own, dappled eyes, green
and grey, black and brown, sparkling; so was his mouth, which was