Pendyce's face came a look half sorrowful, half arch, but
wholly pathetic. 'What! is it beginning already? Oh, don't put me away
from you!' she seemed to say.

"Very well, thank you, dear. And you?"

George did not meet her eyes.

"So-so," he said. "I took rather a nasty knock over the 'City' last
week."

"Is that a race?" asked Mrs. Pendyce.

And by some secret process she knew that he had hurried out that piece
of bad news to divert her attention from another subject, for George had
never been a "crybaby."

She sat down on the edge of the sofa, and though the gong was about to
sound, incited him to dawdle and stay with her.

"And have you any other news, dear? It seems such an age since we've
seen you. I think I've told you all our budget in my letters. You know
there's going to be another event at the Rectory?"

"Another? I passed Barter on the way up. I thought he looked a bit
blue."

A look of pain shot into Mrs. Pendyce's eyes.

"Oh, I'm afraid that couldn't have been the reason, dear." And she
stopped, but to still her own fears hurried on again. "If I'd known
you'd been coming, I'd have kept Cecil Tharp. Vic has had such dear
little puppies. Would you like one? They've all got that nice black
smudge round the eye."

She was watching him as only a mother can watch-stealthily, minutely,
longingly, every little movement, every little change of his face, and
more than all, that fixed something behind which showed the abiding
temper and condition of his heart.

'Something is making him unhappy,' she thought. 'He is changed since I
saw him last, and I can't get at it. I seem to be so far from him--so
far!'

And somehow she knew he had come down this evening because he was lonely
and unhappy, and instinct had made him turn to her.

But she knew that trying to get nearer would only make him put her
farther off, and she could not bear this, so she asked him nothing, and
bent all her strength on hiding from him the pain she felt.

She went downstairs with her arm in his, and leaned very heavily on it,
as though again trying to get close to him, and forget the feeling she
had had all that winter--the feeling of being barred away, the feeling
of secrecy and restraint.

Mr. Pendyce and the two girls were in the drawing-room.

"Well, George," said the Squire dryly, "I'm glad you've come. How you
can stick in London at this time of year! Now you're down you'd better
stay a couple of days. I want to take