A marrying man

Kathleen Morrison arrives back in London to find a silent, almost vacant house in North Kensington, its empty rooms echoing each other and the distant clatter of bolts closing doors. The house, once lively with family, now feels like a place for ghosts and grumblers, and a stack of unopened letters from her brother and sister‑in‑law adds a tense, waiting quality to her stay. As she moves through the unfamiliar, late‑summer stillness, she is both unsettled and oddly at peace, giving herself room to reflect on a memory that refuses to fade.

That memory is a brief, sun‑filled romance with the young botanist Gareth Albert Temple, sparked during a chaotic chase across the Alps while she shepherded a group of schoolgirls. Their fleeting intimacy, marked by his admiration of her competence and a courteous, almost courtly affection, lingers like a warm afterglow against the cold of her present surroundings. The story unfolds as Kathleen balances the quiet expectations of family and society with the lingering pull of a love that seemed both inevitable and impossibly brief.