ded one small oak-panelled private sitting-room, in which
Holly sat to receive, white-frocked, shy, and alone, when the only guest
arrived. Rather as one would touch a moth, Val took her hand. And
wouldn't she wear this 'measly flower'? It would look ripping in her
hair. He removed a gardenia from his coat.

"Oh! No, thank you--I couldn't!" But she took it and pinned it at her
neck, having suddenly remembered that word 'showy'! Val's buttonhole
would give offence; and she so much wanted Jolly to like him. Did she
realise that Val was at his best and quietest in her presence, and was
that, perhaps, half the secret of his attraction for her?

"I never said anything about our ride, Val."

"Rather not! It's just between us."

By the uneasiness of his hands and the fidgeting of his feet he was
giving her a sense of power very delicious; a soft feeling too--the wish
to make him happy.

"Do tell me about Oxford. It must be ever so lovely."

Val admitted that it was frightfully decent to do what you liked; the
lectures were nothing; and there were some very good chaps. "Only," he
added, "of course I wish I was in town, and could come down and see you."

Holly moved one hand shyly on her knee, and her glance dropped.

"You haven't forgotten," he said, suddenly gathering courage, "that we're
going mad-rabbiting together?"

Holly smiled.

"Oh! That was only make-believe. One can't do that sort of thing after
one's grown up, you know."

"Dash it! cousins can," said Val. "Next Long Vac.--it begins in June,
you know, and goes on for ever--we'll watch our chance."

But, though the thrill of conspiracy ran through her veins, Holly shook
her head. "It won't come off," she murmured.

"Won't it!" said Val fervently; "who's going to stop it? Not your father
or your brother."

At this moment Jolyon and Jolly came in; and romance fled into Val's
patent leather and Holly's white satin toes, where it itched and tingled
during an evening not conspicuous for open-heartedness.

Sensitive to atmosphere, Jolyon soon felt the latent antagonism between
the boys, and was puzzled by Holly; so he became unconsciously ironical,
which is fatal to the expansiveness of youth. A letter, handed to him
after dinner, reduced him to a silence hardly broken till Jolly and Val
rose to go. He went out with them, smoking his cigar, and walked with
his son to the gates of Christ Church. Turning back, he took out the
letter and read