as also to appear at a single big
reception--"Baroni won't look at anything less than a ducal house with
Royalty present," as Jerry banteringly asserted--and then, while the
world was still agape with interest and excitement, the singer was to
be whisked away to Crailing for three months' holiday, and to accept no
more engagements until the winter. By that time, Baroni anticipated,
people would be feverishly impatient for her reappearance, and the
winter campaign would resolve itself into one long trail of glory.

Diana had been better able latterly to devote herself to her work, as
Errington had been out of England for a time. So long as there was the
likelihood of meeting him at any moment, her nerves had been more or
less in a state of tension. There was that between them which made it
impossible for her to regard him with the cool, indifferent friendship
which he himself seemed so well able to assume. Despite herself, the
sound of his voice, the touch of his hand, caused a curious little
fluttering within her, like the flicker of a compass needle when it
quivers to the north. If he entered the same room as herself, she was
instantly aware of it, even though she might not chance to be looking
in his direction at the moment. Indeed, her consciousness of him was
so acute, so vital, that she sometimes wondered how it was possible
that one person could mean so much to another and yet himself feel no
reciprocal interest. And that he did feel none, his unvarying
indifference of manner had at last convinced her.

But, even so, she was unable to banish him from her thoughts. This was
the first day of her return to London after the Easter holidays, which
she had spent as usual at Crailing Rectory, and already she was
wondering rather wistfully whether Errington would be back in England
during the summer. She felt that if only she could know why he had
changed so completely towards her, why the interest she had so
obviously awakened in him upon first meeting had waned and died, she
might be able to thrust him completely out of her thoughts, and accept
him merely as the casual acquaintance which was all he apparently
claimed to be. But the restless, irritable longing to know, to have
his incomprehensible behaviour explained, kept him ever in her mind.

Only once or twice had his name been mentioned between Olga Lermontof
and herself, and on each occasion the former had repeated her caution,
admonishing Diana to have