l your father consent?'

'Fathers can't stop their daughters from doing things--as they used
to do!' said Pamela, with her chin in the air.

She had moved away from him; her soft gaiety had disappeared; he
felt her all thorns. Yet some perversity made him try to argue with
her. The war--pray the Lord!--might be over before her training as
an Army nurse was half done. Meanwhile, her V.A.D. work at Mannering
was just what was wanted at the moment from girls of her age--hadn't
she seen the appeals for V.A.D.'s? And also, if by anything she did
at home--or set others free for doing--she could help Captain Dell
and Miss Bremerton to pull the estate round, and get the maximum
amount of food out of it, she would be serving the country in the
best way possible.

'The last ounce of food, mind!--that's what it depends on,' he said,
smiling at her, 'which can stick it longest--they or we. You belong
to the land--ought you desert it?'

Pamela sat unmoved. She knew nothing about the land. Her father had
the new agent--and Miss Bremerton.

'Your sister there,' said Chicksands, nodding towards the front
drawing-room, where Strang and his wife were sitting Darby and Joan
over the fire discussing rations and food prices, 'thinks Miss
Bremerton already overdone.'

'I never saw the least sign of it!'

'But think!--your father never slackens his Greek work--and there is
all the rest.'

'I suppose if it's too much for her she'll give it up,' said Pamela
in her most obstinate voice.

But even then a normally tactful man still held on.

Never was anything more maladroit. It was the stupidity of a clever
fellow, deluding himself with the notion that having refused the
role of lover, he could at least play that of guardian and adviser;
whose conscience, moreover, was so absolutely clear on the subject
of Elizabeth Bremerton that he did not even begin to suspect what
was rankling In the girl's morbid sense.

The relation between them accordingly went from bad to worse; and
when Pamela rose and sharply put an end to their private
conversation, the evening would have practically ended in a quarrel
but for some final saving instinct on Chicksands' part, which made
him mention Desmond as he bade her good-night.

'I could tell you where he is,' he said gravely. 'Only I mustn't. I
had a note from him yesterday--the dear old boy! He wrote in the
highest spirits. His colonel was "ripping," and his men, of course,
the best in the whole b