She spoke with a touch of sharpness.  Her agitation had passed leaving her vexed with herself and with him.

He received the admonition with a grimace.  “Have you heard about my engagement yet?” he enquired irrelevantly, after a moment.

Avery looked at him very steadily through the falling dusk.  She had a feeling that he was trying to hoodwink her by some means not wholly praiseworthy.

“Are you engaged?” she asked him, point-blank.

He made a careless gesture.  “Everybody says so.”

“Are you engaged?” Avery repeated with resolution.

She freed her hand as she uttered the question the second time.  She was standing up very straight against the churchyard wall sternly determined to check all trifling.

Piers straightened himself also.  From the pride of his attitude she thought that he was about to take offence, but his voice held none as he made reply.

“I am not.”

She felt as if some constriction at her heart, of which till that moment she had scarcely been aware, had suddenly slackened.  She drew a long, deep breath.

“Sorry, what?” suggested Piers.

He began to tap a careless tattoo with his whip on the toe of his boot.  He did not appear to be regarding her very closely.  Yet she did not feel at her ease.  That sudden sense as of strain relaxed had left her curiously unsteady.

She ignored his question and asked another.  “Why is everybody saying that you are engaged?”

He lifted his shoulders.  “Because everybody is more or less of a gossiping fool, I should say.  Still,” he threw up his head with a laugh, “notions of that sort have their uses.  My grandfather for instance is firmly of the opinion that I have come home to be married.  I didn’t undeceive him.”

“You let him believe—­what wasn’t true?” said Avery slowly.

He looked straight at her, with his head flung back.  “I did.  It suited my purpose.  I wanted to get home.  He thought it was because the Roses had returned to Wardenhurst.  I let him think so.  It certainly was deadly without them.”

It was then that Avery turned and began quietly to walk on up the hill.  He linked his arm in Pompey’s bridle, and walked beside her.

She spoke after a few moments with something of constraint.  “And how have you been—­amusing yourself?”

“I?” Carelessly he made reply.  “I have been playing around with Ina Rose chiefly—­to save us both from boredom.”

There sounded a faint jeering note behind the carelessness of his voice.  Avery quickened her pace almost unconsciously.

“It’s all right,” said Piers.  “There’s been no damage done.”

“You don’t know that,” said Avery, without looking at him.

“Yes, I do.  She’ll marry Dick Guyes.  I told her she would the night before they left, and she didn’t say she wouldn’t.  He’s a much better chap than I am, you know,” said Piers, with an odd touch of sincerity.  “And he’s head over ears in love with her into the bargain.”