And she drifted hastily on to her feet.  The curtains were still undrawn; and, through the window opposite, she caught sight of a tall figure coming up across the lawn in the frosty twilight.

“Pardon me if I run away.  I’ve forgotten a note I meant to send to poor little Theresa Bilson.—­I must let Laura have it at once, or she mayn’t catch the postman,” she said with equal rapidity and apparent inconsequence.

As Felicia Verity passed out into the hall, at one end of the avenue of stumpy pillars, Carteret came in at the other end through the garden door.  He halted a moment, dazzled by the warmth and light within after the clair-obscure of the frosty dusk without, and looked round the room before recognizing the identity of its remaining occupant.  Then: 

“Ah! you—­dear witch,” he said.  “So you’re home.  And what of your drive?”

Damaris turned round, all of a piece.  Her hands, white against the black, the fingers slightly apart, still pressed back the skirt of her dress as though saving it from the fire scorch, in quaintly careful childish fashion.  Her complexion was that of a child too, in its soft brightness.  And the wonder of her great eyes fairly challenged Carteret’s wits.

“A babe of a thousand years,” he quoted to himself.  “Does that look grow out of a root of divine innocence, or of quite incalculable wisdom?”

“I told you if you would be patient with me I should begin again.  I have begun again, dear Colonel Sahib.”

“So I perceive,” he answered her.

“Is it written so large?” she asked curiously.

“Very large,” he said, falling in with her humour.  “And where does the beginning lead to?”

“I wish you’d tell me.—­Henrietta has begun again too.”

“I know it,” he said.  “Our incomparable Henrietta overtook me on her way from here to the Vicarage, and bestowed her society on me for the better part of half an hour.  She was in astonishing form.”

Carteret came forward and stood on the tiger skin beside Damaris.  Mrs. Frayling’s conversation had given him very furiously to think, and his thoughts had not proved by any means exhilarating.

“Does this recrudescence of our Henrietta, her beginning again, affect the scope and direction of your own beginning again, dearest witch?” he presently enquired, in singularly restrained and colourless accents.

“That depends a good deal upon you—­doesn’t it, Colonel Sahib?” our maiden gravely answered.

Carteret felt as though she dealt him a blow.  The pain was numbing.  He could neither see, nor could he think clearly.  But he traced Mrs. Frayling’s hand in this, and could have cursed her elaborately—­had it been worth while.  But was anything worth while, just now?  He inclined to believe not—­so called himself a doating fool.  And then, though tormented, shaken, turned his mind to making things easy for Damaris.

“Oh!  I see that,” he told her.  “And now you have got hold of your precious little self again and made a start, it’s easy enough to manage your affairs—­in as far as they need any management of mine—­from a distance.  This beginning again is triumphant.  I congratulate you!  You’re your own best physician.  You know how to treat your case to a marvel.  So I abdicate.”