way."

"Haven't you enjoyed yourself?" Avery managed to ask.

He laughed again somewhat grimly. "I wasn't out for enjoyment. I've
been--amusing myself more or less. But that's not the same thing, is it?
I should have drowned myself if I'd stayed out there much longer."

"Don't talk nonsense!" said Avery.

She spoke with a touch of sharpness. Her agitation had passed leaving her
vexed with herself and with him.

He received the admonition with a grimace. "Have you heard about my
engagement yet?" he enquired irrelevantly, after a moment.

Avery looked at him very steadily through the falling dusk. She had a
feeling that he was trying to hoodwink her by some means not wholly
praiseworthy.

"Are you engaged?" she asked him, point-blank.

He made a careless gesture. "Everybody says so."

"Are you engaged?" Avery repeated with resolution.

She freed her hand as she uttered the question the second time. She was
standing up very straight against the churchyard wall sternly determined
to check all trifling.

Piers straightened himself also. From the pride of his attitude she
thought that he was about to take offence, but his voice held none as he
made reply.

"I am not."

She felt as if some constriction at her heart, of which till that moment
she had scarcely been aware, had suddenly slackened. She drew a long,
deep breath.

"Sorry, what?" suggested Piers.

He began to tap a careless tattoo with his whip on the toe of his boot.
He did not appear to be regarding her very closely. Yet she did not feel
at her ease. That sudden sense as of strain relaxed had left her
curiously unsteady.

She ignored his question and asked another. "Why is everybody saying that
you are engaged?"

He lifted his shoulders. "Because everybody is more or less of a
gossiping fool, I should say. Still," he threw up his head with a laugh,
"notions of that sort have their uses. My grandfather for instance is
firmly of the opinion that I have come home to be married. I didn't
undeceive him."

"You let him believe--what wasn't true?" said Avery slowly.

He looked straight at her, with his head flung back. "I did. It suited my
purpose. I wanted to get home. He thought it was because the Roses had
returned to Wardenhurst. I let him think so. It certainly was deadly
without them."

It was then that Avery turned and began quietly to walk on up the hill.
He linked his arm in Pompey's bridle, and walked beside her.

She spoke after a fe