“Muriel darling,” she whispered softly, “don’t you—­don’t you—­like Nick after all?”

The colour rushed over Muriel’s face in a vivid flood.

“Like him!  Like him!” she stammered.  “Why do you ask?”

“Because, dear—­don’t be vexed, I love you frightfully—­you did hurt him so at lunch,” explained Olga, pressing very close to her.

“Hurt him!  Hurt him!” Again Muriel repeated her words, then, recovering sharply, broke into a sudden laugh.  “My dear child, I couldn’t possibly do such a thing if I tried.”

“But you did, you did!” persisted Olga, a faint note of indignation in her voice.  “You don’t know Nick.  He feels—­tremendously.  Of course you might not see it, for it doesn’t often show.  But I know—­I always know—­when he is hurt, by the way he laughs.  And he was hurt to-day.”

She stuck firmly to her point, notwithstanding Muriel’s equally persistent attitude of incredulity, till even Muriel was conscious at last in her inner soul of a faint wonder, a dim and wholly negligible sense of regret.  Not that she would under any circumstances have recalled that thrust of hers.  She felt it had been dealt in fair fight; but even in fair fight there come sometimes moments of regret, when one feels that the enemy’s hand has been intentionally slack.  She knew well that, had he chosen, Nick might have thrust back, instantly and disconcertingly, as his manner was.  But he had refrained, merely covering up his wound—­if wound there had been—­with the laugh that had so wrung Olga’s loving heart.  His ways were strange.  She would never understand him.  But she would like to have known how deep that thrust had gone.

Could she have overheard the conversation between Nick and his remaining guest that followed her departure, she might have received enlightenment on this point, but Nick took very good care to ensure that that conversation should be overheard by none.

As soon as Grange had finished his coffee, he proposed a move to the library, and led the way thither, leaving his own drink untouched behind him.

The library was a large and comfortable apartment completely shut away from the rest of the house, and singularly ill-adapted for eavesdroppers.  The windows looked upon a wide stretch of lawn upon which even a bird could scarcely have lingered unnoticed.  The light that filtered in through green sun-blinds was cool and restful.  An untidy writing-table and a sofa strewn with cushions in disorderly attitudes testified to the fact that Nick had appropriated this room for his own particular den.  There was also a sun-bonnet tossed upon a chair which seemed to indicate that Olga at least did not regard his privacy as inviolable.  The ancient brown volumes stacked upon shelves that ranged almost from floor to ceiling were comfortably undisturbed.  It was plainly a sanctum in which ease and not learning ruled supreme.

Nick established his visitor in an easy-chair and hunted for an ash-tray.  Grange watched him uncomfortably.