‘She arrives for lunch,’ said Nelly, looking at the clock.

‘And the Stewarts are coming to the cottage in the afternoon!’ said Marsworth in despair.  ‘Can you keep her away?’

‘I’ll try—­but you know it’s not much good trying to manage Cicely.’

’Don’t I know it!  I return to my first question—­does she care a hapo’rth?’

Nelly was looking dreamily into the fire.

‘You mean—­does she care enough to give up her ways and take to yours?’

‘Yes, I suppose I do mean that,’ he said, with sudden seriousness.

Nelly shook her head, smiling.

‘I don’t know!  But—­Cicely’s worth a deal of trouble.’

He assented with a mixture of fervour and depression.

’We’ve known each other since we were boy and girl.  That’s what makes the difficulty, perhaps.  We know each other too well.  When she was a child of fourteen, I was already in the Guards, and I used to try and tackle her—­because no one else would.  Her father was dead.  Her mother had no influence with her; and Willy was too lazy.  So I tried my hand.  And I find myself doing the same thing now.  But of course it’s fatal—­it’s fatal!’

Nelly tried to cheer him up, but she was not herself very hopeful.  She, perceived too clearly the martinet in him and the rebel in Cicely.  If something were suddenly to throw them together, some common interest or emotion, each might find the other’s heart in a way past undoing.  On the other hand the jarring habit, once set up, has a way of growing worse, and reducing everything else to dust and ashes.  Finally she wound up with a timid but emphatic counsel.

‘Please—­please—­don’t be sarcastic.’

He looked injured.

‘I never am!’

Nelly laughed.

‘You don’t know when you are.  And be very nice to her this afternoon.’

’How can I, if she shews me at once that I’m unwelcome?  You haven’t answered my question.’

He was standing ready for departure.  Nelly’s face changed—­became all sad and tender pity.

‘You must ask it yourself!’ she said eagerly, ’Go on asking it.  It would be too—­too dreadful, wouldn’t it?—­to miss everything—­by being proud, or offended, for nothing——­’

‘What do you mean by everything?’

‘You know,’ she said, after a moment, shielding her eyes as they looked into the fire; ‘I’m sure you know.  It is everything.’

As he walked back to the cottage, he found himself speculating not so much about his own case as about his friend’s.  Willy was certainly in love.  And Nelly Sarratt was as softly feminine as Cicely was mannish and strong.  But he somehow did not feel that Willy’s chances were any safer than his own.