The Portuguese Escape by Ann Bridge

hers. What a strange being she was!—that smart hair-do and pretty frock, and the eyes and voice of a priestess at some Delphic shrine. Feeling his own inadequacy in a way most unusual with him, Mr. Atherley decided to call up his reserves.
    â€˜There’s someone I want you to meet,’ he said. ‘May I bring her over? I think you might like her.’
    â€˜But please do.’ Hetta was prepared to like any friend of the man who had been to Detvan and noticed how that long low house with its wide courtyard used to be full of sun—it was one of her own most vivid memories. She was still thinking how clever it was of him to have noticed the sun-filled quality of her home when Mr. Atherley returned with Julia Probyn, and introduced them.
    Young women have mental antennae longer than lobsters’, and as delicately fine as those of butterflies. Hetta’s and Julia’s antennae reached out and did whatever the lobster-butterfly equivalent of clicking is—in human terms, they took to one another immediately. There was a moment’s check when Julia mentioned that she was a journalist, but Hetta’s sudden expression of dismay was so obvious that it made the others laugh.
    â€˜Don’t worry—Miss Probyn won’t bother you. She’s only concerned with the royalties,’ Atherley said.
    â€˜Oh, this wedding.’ Hetta’s distaste for the whole subject of the wedding was so audible in her voice that Julia laughed again; as Hetta listened to that long slow gurgle a happy reassured expression came into her face.
    â€˜You, too, think it funny that people should care so much, whether they go or not?’ she asked.
    â€˜Oh no—perfectly normal. There’s surely more social snobbery in the Century of the Common Man than ever before in the world’s history,’ Julia said. ‘I
have
to go—it’s my bread-and-butter.’
    The party was thinning, and Atherley murmured to Julia that they ought to leave. He turned to Hetta.
    â€˜Will you lunch with me on Thursday? So that we can talk about Detvan?’
    â€˜With Mama?’
    â€˜Of course if you say so—but Miss Probyn will tell youthat in the free world young ladies do lunch with young men without their parents.’
    â€˜So? This too I do not know.’
    â€˜Ask the Monsignor—he’s your mother’s spiritual adviser, so if he approves, she can’t object,’ said Atherley, smiling. ‘Anyhow Miss Probyn will be there.’
    â€˜If Mama has no other plans for me, I shall be happy to come. Thank you,’ Hetta said, with the composed decision that somehow had so much distinction.
    â€˜She
is
out of the top drawer, isn’t she?’ Julia remarked to Atherley as they drove back to Lisbon.
    â€˜Who, the young Countess? Yes. It’s so curious, really, that little aristocratic air of hers, when she’s been a convent school-girl for nearly two-thirds of her life, and cook to a rustic priest in Hungary for the rest.’
    â€˜Oh, was she?’
    â€˜Yes.’ He repeated what Townsend Waller had passed on to him of Hetta’s experiences.
    â€˜Mmm,’ said Julia, reflectively. ‘
She
can’t be the frightfully important Hunk who was going to be got out to tell the world about conditions there, can she?’
    â€˜What important Hunk?’
    â€˜Oh well, I heard ages ago that one was to be got out, if it could be fixed.’
    â€˜Who from?’
    â€˜Just a friend, who does those sort of things,’ said Julia airily, while the slight blush which always enraged her appeared. ‘But this girl would hardly be high-powered enough, would she?’
    â€˜She seems fairly high-powered, but I gather the one thing she
won’t
do is tell anyone anything,’ said Atherley, ‘so I shouldn’t say telling the world was really her line. Anyhow she came out quite openly, as the result of a piece of perfectly honest