We'll see about
that."

Again Tom opened his eyes, and he saw that face above him, and even as
he looked the head was bent lower and lower till once again the red lips
touched his own.

"Marjorie, is it only pity?" he whispered.

But she shook her head. "It is love, all my love--I know now. It is all
ended. I know the truth. Oh, Tom, it--it was you all the time, and after
all it was only you!"

CHAPTER XLVI

"--SHE HAS GIVEN!"

Never so slowly as to-day had John Everard driven the six and a half
miles that divided Buddesby and Little Langbourne from Starden. Never
had his frank and open and cheerful face been so clouded and overcast.
Many worries, many doubts and fears and uncertainties, were at work in
John Everard's mind.

No doubts and uncertainties of anyone but of himself. It was
himself--his own feelings, his own belief in himself, his own belief in
his love that he was doubting. So he drove very slowly the six and a
half miles to Starden, because he had many questions to ask of himself,
questions to which answers did not come readily.

"Gipsy is right, she always is," he thought. "She is finer-minded,
better, more generous than I am. Her mind could not harbour one doubt of
anyone she loved, and I--" He frowned.

Helen Everard, from an upper window, saw his arrival, and watching him
as he drove up the approach to the house, marked the frown on his brow,
the lack of his usual cheerfulness.

"There is something wrong; there seems to be nothing, but something
wrong all the time," she thought with a sigh.

"If, after all the trouble I have taken, my plans should come to
nothing, I shall be bitterly disappointed. I blame Connie. Con's
unworldliness is simply silly. Oh, these people!"

"It is a long time since I saw you, Johnny--four or five days, isn't
it?" Joan said. She held out her hand to him, and he took it. He seemed
to hesitate, and then drew a little closer and kissed her cheek.

Something wrong. She too saw it, but it did not disturb her as it did
Helen.

"Yes, four days--five--I forget," he said, scarcely realising what an
admission was this from him, who awhile ago had counted every hour
jealously that had kept them apart.

For a few minutes they talked of indifferent things, each knowing it for
a preliminary of something to follow.

He had come to tell her something, Joan felt.

"She has something to say to me," Johnny knew. So for a few minutes they
fenced, and then it was h