Avery had spoken to Lennox Tudor about her more than once, but he never discussed the subject willingly.  He was never summoned to the Vicarage now, and, when they chanced to meet, the Vicar invariably reserved for him the iciest greeting that courtesy would permit.  Tudor had defeated him once on his own ground, and he was not the man to forget it.  So poor Jeanie’s ailments were given none but home treatment to alleviate them, and it seemed to Avery that her strength had dwindled almost perceptibly of late.

She pondered the matter as she strolled along the shore, debating with herself if she would indeed take a step that she had been contemplating for some time, and, now that Jeanie was in her care, take her up to town and obtain Maxwell Wyndham’s opinion with regard to her.  It was a project she had mentioned to no one, and she hesitated a good deal over putting it into practice.  That Mrs. Lorimer would readily countenance such an act she well knew, but she was also aware that it would be regarded as a piece of rank presumption by the child’s father which might easily be punished by the final withdrawal of Jeanie from her care.  That was a contingency which she hardly desired to risk.  Jeanie had become so infinitely precious to her in those days.

Unconsciously her feet had turned towards their old haunt.  She found herself halting by the low square rock on which Piers once had sat and cursed the sea-birds in bitterness of spirit.  Often as she had visited the spot since, she had never done so without the memory of that spring morning flashing unbidden through her brain.  It went through her now like a sharp dart of physical pain; the boyish figure, the ardent eyes, the black hair plastered wet on the wide, patrician brow.  Her heart contracted.  She seemed to hear again the eager, wooing words.

He never wrote to her now.  She believed he was in town, probably amusing himself as he had amused himself at Monte Carlo, passing the time in a round of gaieties, careless flirtations, possibly deeper intrigues.  Crowther had probably kept him straight through the winter, but she did not believe that Crowther’s influence would be lasting.  There was a sting in the very thought of Crowther.  She was sure now that he had always known the bitter secret that Piers had kept from her.  It had been the bond between them.  Piers had obviously feared betrayal, but Crowther had not deemed it his business to betray him.  He had suffered the deception to continue.  She recognized that his position had been a difficult one; but it did not soften her heart towards him.  Her heart had grown hard towards all men of late.  She sometimes thought that but for Jeanie it would have atrophied altogether.  There were so few things nowadays that seemed to touch her.  She could not even regret her lost baby.  But yet the memory of Piers sitting on that rock at her feet pierced her oddly; Piers, the passionate, the adoring, the hot-blooded; Piers the invincible; Piers the prince!