The following Sunday morning, Marcus stays in bed feeling unwell. At family prayers, Leo sits beside Trimingham for the first time and is startled despite the advance warning: A large scar pulls one eye downward and forces the mouth into a permanent partial grin. Leo quickly decides Trimingham poses no real threat and supposes the Maudsleys are extending Christian charity to an injured man. At breakfast, Marian takes the seat beside Trimingham on his better side; to Leo they look like Beauty and the Beast.

After the meal, Mrs. Maudsley notices Marcus’s absence and goes to his room. Leo slips past a “No Admittance” sign to visit. Marcus reports having spots and a headache and expects a measles diagnosis; he cheerfully predicts it will disrupt the planned cricket match and ball on Saturday the 28th. Downstairs, the church party assembles and sets off. Marian falls in beside Leo and apologizes for forgetting a personal detail he had shared with her in Norwich. Leo spots Trimingham following them, but Marian makes no sign, and Trimingham eventually overtakes them to walk with the group ahead.

In church, the Maudsley party occupies a raised transept. Leo notices the transept walls are covered with memorial tablets to successive Viscounts, and observes that the ninth viscount appears to be missing—a hypothesis that instantly pulls the entire Trimingham lineage out of dead history and into the present, making the church and Brandham Hall feel charged with living significance. He concludes that the Maudsleys, as current occupants of the Hall, share in this glory—and by extension, so does he. The Litany’s phrase “miserable sinners” (85) provokes quiet rebellion: Leo believes life should be met with personal courage and initiative, not self-abasement before God.

Walking back from church, Trimingham catches up with Leo and introduces himself. Leo, unfamiliar with social convention, responds bluntly. After some confusion over why Trimingham holds no “Mister” (87), Trimingham hints he has a title. Leo asks, haltingly, whether he is speaking to the ninth Viscount Trimingham. Trimingham confirms it. Leo is briefly annoyed at not having been told, then overwhelmed with awe. Trimingham asks him to carry a message to Marian: She left her prayer book in the church. Leo delivers it but mispronounces Hugh as “who” (89), causing confused laughter. Marian sends back thanks, though Trimingham seems disappointed she does not come in person. Outside, Trimingham identifies a waiting dogcart as belonging to Dr. Franklin, who has come to see Marcus, and Leo, impressed, remarks that Trimingham is effectively a guest in his own house.

After lunch, Mrs. Maudsley tells Leo that Marcus must be kept isolated and moves him to a small cell-like room. The narrow, private space gives Leo the sense of being cast in a new role. He changes into the green suit and slips out of the house unobserved.

The thermometer reads 84 degrees—Leo is satisfied, but certain it can rise further. Left to his own devices for the afternoon, he walks to the deserted bathing place, which unnerves him, then crosses the sluices and pushes through a reaped wheat field to a farmyard. Treating the farmyard as a test of nerve, he climbs a straw stack and slides down without first preparing a soft landing. His knee strikes a hidden chopping block and is badly gashed. Ted Burgess finds him bleeding and threatens to punish Leo for trespassing until Leo mentions that they met at the river. Learning Leo is from the Hall, Burgess immediately softens. He brings Leo into his kitchen, cleans the wound, and bandages it with his own handkerchief, calling Leo a Spartan for bearing the sting without flinching.

When Leo politely asks if he can do anything in return, Burgess hesitates and first takes him out to see his horses—apparently while weighing how much to trust the boy. Back indoors, he questions Leo closely: Is Leo ever alone with Marian? Close enough to pass her something without others seeing? Leo confirms he is. Burgess writes a letter laboriously and instructs Leo to deliver it only if Marian is alone, and to hide it in the lavatory cistern otherwise. He warns that if the letter is discovered, it will be a bad outcome for everyone. Leo, rising to the challenge, makes a dramatic promise to protect it. Burgess hands over the letter—left both unaddressed and unsigned. When Leo asks how Burgess can write to someone he does not know, Burgess says they are acquainted in a way and have dealings, and will say no more.

Leo returns to Brandham Hall during tea and describes his injury and Burgess’s kindness. Mr. Maudsley identifies Burgess as the Black Farm tenant; Trimingham says he wants a word with him at the upcoming cricket match. Marian takes Leo to the bathroom to redress his knee. She notices the bloodstained handkerchief and says she will wash it. Leo gives her the letter; she almost snatches it and slips away briefly to hide it. On returning, she forgets she has already bandaged his knee. She tells Leo there is no reply and instructs him to tell nobody about the letter—it would, she warns, cause terrible trouble.

With Trimingham now at the Hall, the household takes on a tense, expectant atmosphere. Mrs. Maudsley organizes daily picnics and excursions, always looking to Trimingham for approval before committing to any plan. At one picnic, Leo notices Marian’s attention directed almost entirely at Trimingham. Trimingham spots Leo watching and gives him the nickname “Mercury” (110)—the messenger of the gods—an identity Leo finds deeply satisfying. He dozes off on the grass and, feigning sleep, overhears Marian suggest to her mother that he would be happier left to his own devices. The two women remain unresolved over whether to cancel the ball if Marcus has measles.

On the drive home, Leo asks the coachman about Burgess and receives the cryptic description “a bit of a lad” (113). Back at the Hall, a letter from Leo’s mother feels remote and irrelevant—he can no longer identify with the small domestic world she describes. In the game larder, he checks the thermometer and feels intoxicated, connecting the soaring heat to the household’s general mood of anticipation—one he has begun to associate with the expected union of Marian and Trimingham.

Trimingham spots Leo near the lawn and asks him to find Marian for a croquet game. Leo instinctively heads for the outhouses and finds her there, distracted and cold. The familiar confusion between “Hugh,” “who,” and “you” (118) arises again; once untangled, Marian agrees reluctantly to play. She also tells Leo he will be left behind for the next day’s luncheon and asks what he plans to do. Following her lead, Leo mentions visiting Burgess’s straw stack. Marian immediately asks him to carry another letter to Burgess. Pressed on why he likes the errand, Leo ranks both men—Trimingham above Burgess, because he is a viscount and gentle—then admits the real reason: He likes Marian herself. She smiles, then abruptly changes her mind about croquet, citing a headache. When Leo protests that Trimingham will be disappointed, she relents—but insists on walking to the lawn alone.