“Caesar and Pompey are both dead beat,” said Piers.  “And I—­” he looked deliberately at Avery, “—­am as fresh as when I started.”

Again, as it were in response to that look, her eyelids fluttered; but she did not raise them.  Again the colour started and died in her cheeks.

“Have you had anything to eat?” she asked.

“Nothing,” said Piers.

He took the cup she offered him, and drained it.  There was a fitful gleam in his dark eyes as of a red, smouldering fire.

But Jeanie’s soft voice intervening dispelled it.  “How very hungry you must be!” she said in a motherly tone.  “Will bread and butter and cake be enough for you?”

“Quite enough,” said Piers.  “Like you, Jeanie, I am not hungry.”  He handed back his cup to be filled again.  “But I have a lively thirst,” he said.

“It has been so hot to-day,” observed Avery.

“It is never too hot for me,” he rejoined.  “Hullo!  Who’s that?”

He was staring towards the house under frowning brows.  A figure had just emerged upon the terrace.

“Dr. Tudor!” said Jeanie.

Again Piers’ eyes turned upon his wife.  He looked at her with a sombre scrutiny.  After a moment she lifted her own and resolutely returned the look.

“Won’t you go and meet him?” she said.

He rose abruptly, and strode away.

Avery’s eyes followed him, watching narrowly as the two men met.  Lennox Tudor, she saw, offered his hand, and after the briefest pause, Piers took it.  They came back slowly side by side.

Again, unobtrusively, Jeanie rose.  Tudor caught sight of her almost before he saw Avery.

“Hullo!” he said.  “What are you doing here?”

Jeanie explained with her customary old-fashioned air of responsibility:  “I have come to take care of Avery, as she isn’t very well.”

Tudor’s eyes passed instantly and very swiftly to Avery’s face.  He bent slightly over the hand she gave him.

“A good idea!” he said brusquely.  “I hope you will take care of each other.”

He joined them at the tea-table, and talked of indifferent things.  Piers talked also with that species of almost fierce gaiety with which Avery had become so well acquainted of late.  She was relieved that there was no trace of hostility apparent in his manner.

But, notwithstanding this fact, she received a shock of surprise when at the end of a quarter of an hour he got up with a careless:  “Come along, my queen!  We’ll see if Pompey has got the supper he deserves.”

Even Tudor looked momentarily astonished, but as he watched Piers saunter away with his arm round Jeanie’s thin shoulders his expression changed.  He turned to her abruptly.  “How are you feeling to-day?” he enquired.  “I had to come in and ask.”

“It was very kind of you,” she answered.

He smiled in his rather grim fashion.  “I came more for my own satisfaction than for yours,” he observed.  “You are better, are you?”