thout seeking to see
her, to say good-bye. The chill of her cold pride fell on Joan. Send for
him! Never! never! He had gone when he might have stayed--when, had he
been here now, she would have told him that she was free.

Very slowly she walked back to the house, to meet Helen's questioning
eyes.

"I am glad, dear, that there seems to be a better understanding between
you and Johnny," Helen said.

"There is a perfect understanding between us. Johnny is not going to
marry me. He is choosing someone who will love him more and understand
him better than I could."

"Then--then, after all, it is over? You and he are to part?"

"Have parted--as lovers, but not as friends."

"And after all I have done," Helen said miserably.

Hugh had gone home. He had had a letter from Lady Linden telling about
the accident to Tom Arundel, about his serious illness, and Marjorie's
devoted nursing. And now he was shaping his course for Hurst Dormer. He
had debated in his mind whether he should wait and see her, and then had
decided against it.

"She knows that I love her, and she loves me. She is letting her pride
stand between us. Everard is too good and too fine a fellow to keep her
bound by a promise if he thought it would hurt her to keep it. Her
future and Everard's and mine must lay in her own hands." And so, doing
violence to his feelings and his desires, he had left Starden, and now
was back in Hurst Dormer, wandering about, looking at the progress the
workmen had made during his absence. He had come home, and though he
loved the place, its loneliness weighed heavily on him. The rooms seemed
empty. He wanted someone to talk things over with, to discuss this and
that. He was not built to be self-centred.

For two days and two nights he bore with Hurst Dormer and its shadows
and its solitude, and then he called out the car and motored over to
Cornbridge.

"Oh, it's you," said her ladyship. "I suppose you got my letter?"

"Yes; I had it sent on to me."

"It's a pity you don't stay at home now and again."

"Perhaps I shall in future."

She looked at him. He was unlike himself, careworn and weary, and a
little ill.

"Tom is mending rapidly, a wonderful constitution; but it was touch and
go. Marjorie was simply wonderful, I'll do her that credit. Between
ourselves, Hugh, I always regarded Marjorie as rather weak, namby-pamby,
early Victorian--you know what I mean; but she's a woman, and it has
touched her. She wouldn't