again in the evening. But when evening came Lady Susan had retired to bed,
feeling far too ill to receive visitors.

It was not until after Sir Philip's departure that she would allow herself
to admit that she was suffering acutely, and then she lay back against her
cushions, looking so white and exhausted that Ann was thoroughly alarmed
and despatched Marie in search of the doctor, who promptly prescribed rest
and quiet. By the following morning Lady Susan found herself too stiff even
to wish to move. She had tripped and fallen suddenly, without being able to
save herself at all, and she was more bruised and shaken than she or any
one else had suspected.

For the next few days, therefore, she was relegated to the role of invalid.
She was suffering a good deal of pain, and in the circumstances Ann felt
disinclined to worry her with an account of the predicament in which she
and Tony had found themselves during her absence at Evian. So that when
Lady Susan asked her how she had amused herself that day, she merely
vouchsafed that she had gone up to the Dents de Loup and stayed the night
there in order to see the sunrise. Afterwards, it seemed simpler to let it
rest at that, rather than enter into fresh explanations. The whole incident
had come to assume much smaller proportions in retrospect, and the fact
that she and Tony had not encountered any other visitors at the hotel had
served to reassure her considerably.

By the end of a week Lady Susan was sufficiently convalescent to hobble
about with the aid of a stick, and when Tony called with a huge sheaf of
flowers for the invalid, and the news that there was a particularly good
programme of music to be given at the Kursaal that evening, she insisted
that Ann should go with him to hear it. Ann protested, but Lady Susan swept
her objections aside.