It was perhaps as well that the questions were over, for even while Pettifer was speaking Stella’s voice was heard in the hall.  Pettifer had just time to thrust away the envelope with the cuttings into a drawer before she came into the room with Dick.  She had been forced to leave the three men together, but she had dreaded it.  During that one hour of absence she had lived through a lifetime of terror and anxiety.  What would Thresk tell them?  What was he now telling them?  She was like one waiting downstairs while a surgical operation is being performed in the theatre above.  She had hurried Dick back to Little Deeding, and when she came into the room her eyes roamed round in suspense from Thresk to Hazlewood, from Hazlewood to Pettifer.  She saw the tray of miniatures upon the table.

“You admire the collection?” she said to Thresk.

“Very much,” he answered, and Pettifer took her by the arm and in a voice of kindness which she had never heard him use before he said: 

“Now tell me about your house.  That’s much more interesting.”

CHAPTER XXV

IN THE LIBRARY

Henry Thresk took Mrs. Pettifer in to dinner that night and she found him poor company.  He tried indeed by fits and starts to entertain her, but his thoughts were elsewhere.  He was in a great pother and trouble about Stella Ballantyne, who sat over against him on the other side of the table.  She wore no traces of the consternation which his words had caused her a couple of hours before.  She had come dressed in a slim gown of shimmering blue with her small head erect, a smile upon her lips and a bright colour in her cheeks.  Thresk hardly knew her, he had to tell himself again and again that this was the Stella Ballantyne whom he had known here and in India.  She was not the girl who had ridden with him upon the downs and made one month of his life very memorable and one day a shameful recollection.  Nor was she the stricken creature of the tent in Chitipur.  She was a woman sure of her resources, radiant in her beauty, confident that what she wore was her colour and gave her her value.  Yet her trouble was greater than Thresk’s, and many a time during the course of that dinner, when she felt his eyes resting upon her, her heart sank in fear.  She sought his company after dinner, but she had no chance of a private word with him.  Old Mr. Hazlewood took care of that.  One moment Stella must sing; at another she must play a rubber of bridge.  He at all events had not laid aside his enmity and suspected some understanding between her and his guest.  At eleven Mrs. Pettifer took her leave.  She came across the room to Henry Thresk.

“Are you staying over to-morrow?” she asked, and Thresk with a laugh answered: 

“I wish that I could.  But I have to catch an early train to London.  Even to-night my day’s work’s not over.  I must sit up for an hour or two over a brief.”