looking in the glass. "Dear me, how late!" she said, her eyes turning to
the clock. "How dreadful of us to have kept poor Dick up so late. Shall
we go to bed, dearest? I'm dreadfully sleepy."

"You didn't mean me to come for the walk, too, did you?" Christina
asked, in a voice as easy, putting up her hand to hide a yawn. "It's our
usual hour;--that's why I ask. But you meant him to understand that you
wanted it to be a _tete-a-tete_, didn't you? It's all right. I can go to
Mrs. Pomfret's for my fitting at eleven."

"But, dearest, of course you are coming," said Milly instantly.

Their eyes were on each other now, and their faces armed and masked.
Christina measured the depth of estrangement in all that the flexible,
disingenuous acquiescence hid of disappointment, bitterness, even
hatred.

"Oh no, no, indeed; I think you ought to have your good-bye walk alone,"
she insisted. "He will expect it now. I'm sure he thought that you
particularly wanted it to be alone."

"He couldn't have thought anything so unlikely," said Milly. "It is our
good-bye walk with you."

So Christina went with them. She felt herself still trembling in every
nerve from the appalling risk she had run, and ran; for which was the
greater risk, that Milly should realize her guile and hate her, or that
Milly and Dick should come to an understanding? She could not tell; nor
where she stood; yet triumph trembled in her fear. She had succeeded.
They had not spoken together. In the park she and Milly bade Dick
good-bye. Dick's train was to go in the early evening. Milly, when they
reached home--and she had talked lightly if not gaily in the
hansom--said that she had rather a headache. She would have her luncheon
in her room and sleep through the afternoon and be fit and fresh for the
play that night. Christina knew in an instant that a last desperate hope
cowered beneath the affected languor and lightness; and it watched her,
feverishly, like the eyes of a tracked animal creeping in an underbrush
past enemies' guns. When she replied, kissing her friend tenderly, that
a good rest was the best of cures for a headache and that she herself
would do some shopping and go to the tea for which they were engaged,
these large, sick eyes of Milly's hope and fear widened and shone with a
recovered security. She wanted to be left alone that afternoon. She
would not go to Dick; Christina knew her too accurately to believe that
possible, and Dick had been too stupi