They walked back together into the house, and Blanche, going over to the fire-place, poured herself out another cup of tea.

In a sense she still felt as if she was living through a terrible, unreal dream, and yet it was an unutterable relief to be no longer obliged to pretend.

She glanced furtively at Varick.

He looked calm, cheerful, collected.  “Will you excuse me for a few moments?  I have got several things to do,” he said.  “Then I think I will go out and tramp about for a bit.  It’s been a strain for you as well as for me, Blanche,” he added sympathetically.

“Yes, it has,” she answered almost inaudibly.

“Is there anything I can get you?” he asked.  “Will you be quite comfortable?”

She repeated, mechanically:  “Quite comfortable, thank you, Lionel,” and then, as an after-thought:  “I suppose we shall dine at the same time as usual?”

“Certainly—­why not?” He looked puzzled at her question.  “Let me see—­it’s not much after five now; I’ll be back by seven.”

He walked to the door, and from there turned round.  “So long!” he cried out cheerily, and she was surprised, for Varick seldom made use of any slang or colloquialism.

Feeling all at once utterly exhausted and spent, she drew a deep chair forward to the fire and lay back in it.  Her mind seemed completely to empty itself of thought.  She neither remembered the past nor considered the future, and very soon she slipped off into a deep sleep—­the sleep of exhaustion which so often follows a great mental strain.

* * * * *

It must have been over an hour later that Blanche seemed to awaken to a perception that the big oak door behind her, which gave access to the deep-eaved porch, had opened and closed.

She looked round; and, in the candle-light, for the fire had died down, she saw Varick, looking neither to the right nor to the left, walk quickly across the long room and slip noiselessly through the door leading to the interior of the house.

Then it was seven o’clock?  Nearly three-quarters of an hour before she must go up and dress for dinner.

Almost at once she was asleep again, to be, however, thoroughly awakened a few moments later by the opening and the shutting of a door.

It was the old butler, a man Blanche had come to like and to respect.

He held a salver in his hand, and on the salver was a letter.  “Mr. Varick asked me to give you this note at a quarter-past seven, ma’am.  I understood him to say that he might be late for dinner to-night as he had to go up to the Reservoir Cottage.”

Blanche sat up, all her senses suddenly on the alert.

“Mr. Varick came in some minutes ago,” she said, “at least, I think he did.”

She was beginning to wonder if Lionel had really come in, or if she had only dreamt that he had done so.

“I don’t think he came in, ma’am, for I’ve been in the dining-room, with the door open, for a long time.  I would have heard him if he had come through and gone upstairs.”