whole of the Monday,
and then at his absenting himself to-day, having gone to see the
Professor, of course--since he was out of the house at tea-time when she
had sent to his room to enquire--that she had determined to see what a
little jealousy would do for him. But if he were off on the morrow this
might not be a safe moment to try it.

Mr. Hanbury-Green, however, had not the slightest intention of giving up
his place, in spite of several well-directed hints, and sat on like one
belonging to the spot.

So they all had to go off to dress without any longed-for word having
been spoken. And Mrs. Cricklander was far too circumspect a hostess to
attempt to arrange a _tete-a-tete_ after dinner under the eye of an
important social leader like Lady Maulevrier, whom she had only just
succeeded in enticing to stay in her country house. So, with the usual
semi-political chaff, the evening passed, and good-nights and good-bys
were said, and early next day John Derringham left for London.

He would write--he decided--and all the way up in the train he buried
himself in the engrossing letters and papers he had received from his
Chief by the morning's post.

And for the next six weeks he was in such a turmoil of hard work and
deep and serious questions about a foreign State that he very seldom had
time to go into society, and when at last he was a little more free,
Mrs. Cricklander, he found, had not returned from Paris, whither she
always went several times a year for her clothes.

But they had written to one another once or twice.

He had promised in the last letter that he would go down to Wendover
again for Whitsuntide, and this time he firmly determined nothing should
keep him from his obvious and delectable fate.

Mrs. Cricklander had no haunting fears now. She could discover no reason
for John Derringham's change towards her. Arabella had been mute and had
put it down to the stress of his life. This tension with the foreign
State, it leaked out, had been known to the Ministers for a week before
it had been made public--that, of course, was the cause of his
preoccupation, and she would simply order some especially irresistible
garments in Paris, and bide her time.

He wrote the most charming letters, though they were hardly long enough
to be called anything but notes; but there was always the insinuation in
them that she was the one person in the world who understood him, and
they were expressed with his usual cultiva