les looked very frail and tired
lying there.

"Bill," she said, "come here," and he came, though not very willingly,
closer to her.

She pulled him down. "I only want to tell you that I love you," she
whispered, and his anger, his irritation, vanished like snow in the sun.

Blanche was already at the door. She turned round. "Well, I must be off
now to see the _chef_, and to make all sorts of arrangements. Sir Lyon
is staying on--rather unlike him to change his mind, but he's done
so--at the last moment."

"I wish _I_ could get a few more days' holiday," said Bill ruefully. "My
number's up this afternoon."

The letters he had to write could go to blazes--of course he meant to
spend each of the precious minutes that remained in the next few hours
with Bubbles!

"You'll be able to escort old Miss Burnaby to town, for Helen's staying
on," went on Blanche.

"Helen staying on?" exclaimed Bubbles. "I'm glad of that! Oh, and Sir
Lyon's staying on, too?"

She suddenly gave one of her funny, eerie little chuckles; but she made
no other comment.

"Yes," called out Blanche. "And Dr. Panton's going--so I've a good many
little things to see to."

Bill sprang to the door, and opened it for her.

As it shut she heard Bubbles' voice, and it was a voice Blanche Farrow
hardly knew. "Are you really sorry you're going away from your little
kid, Bill?"

Blanche sighed sharply. After all, so she told herself, there is
something to be said for love's young dream.

CHAPTER XXI

It marked ten minutes to twelve on the tower of the ancient chantry
church of Darnaston as Blanche Farrow walked across the village green
and past the group of thatched cottages composing the pretty hamlet
which looks so small compared with its noble house of God. But, though
she was early, the man she was to meet was evidently already there, for
a big, mud-stained motor-car was drawn up in the lane which runs to the
left of the church.

Feeling more and more apprehensive, she knew not of what, she walked up
the path between the graves, and then suddenly she saw Mark Gifford--his
spare, still active-looking figure framed in the stone porch, his plain,
but pleasant, intelligent-looking face full of a grave welcome.

He stepped out of the porch and gripped her hand in silence.

She felt that he was deeply stirred, stirred as she had never known him
to be--excepting, perhaps, on that occasion, years and years ago, when
he had first asked her