Olive drew herself up with dignity.  “It is not my intention to go so long as you are in the house,” she said with great distinctness.

“Indeed!” said Piers.  “And why not?”

He spoke with the utmost quietness, but Avery caught the faintest tremor in his voice that warned her that Olive was treading dangerous ground.

She hastened to intervene.  “But of course you are going now,” she said to him.  “It is bedtime for us all.  Good-night!  And thank you for walking home with me!”

Her own tone was perfectly normal.  She turned to him with outstretched hand, but he put it gently aside.

“One minute!” he said.  “I should like an answer to my question first.  Why are you so determined to see me out of the house?”

He looked straight at Olive as he spoke, no longer careless of mien, but implacable as granite.

Olive, however, was wholly undismayed.  She was the only one of the Vicar’s children who had never had cause to feel a twinge of fear.  “You had better ask yourself that question,” she said, in her cool young treble.  “You probably know the answer better than I do.”

Piers’ expression changed.  For a single instant he looked furious, but he mastered himself almost immediately.  “It’s a lucky thing for you that you are not my little girl,” he observed grimly.  “If you were, you should have the slapping of your life to-night.  As it is,—­well, you have asked me for an explanation of my presence here, and you shall have one.  I am here in the capacity of escort to Mrs. Denys.  Have you any fault to find with that?”

Olive returned his look steadily with her cold grey eyes while she considered his words.  She seemed momentarily at a loss for an answer, but Piers’ first remarks were scarcely of a character to secure goodwill or allay suspicion.  She rapidly made up her mind.

“I shall tell Miss Whalley in the morning,” she said.  “My father said I was to go to her if anything went wrong.”  She added, with a malevolent glance towards Avery, “I suppose you know that Mrs. Denys is under notice to leave at the end of her month?”

Piers glanced at Avery too—­a glance of swift interrogation.  She nodded very slightly in answer.

He looked again at Olive with eyes that gleamed in a fashion that few could have met without quailing.

“Is she indeed?” he said.  “I venture to predict that she will leave before then.  If you are anxious to impart news to Miss Whalley, you may tell her also that Mrs. Denys is going to be my wife, and that the marriage will take place—­” he looked at Avery again and all the hardness went out of his face—­“just as soon as she will permit.”

Dead silence followed the announcement.  Avery’s face was pale, but there was a faint smile at her lips.  She met Piers’ look without a tremor.  She even drew slightly nearer to him; and he, instantly responding, slipped a swift hand through her arm.