And here, instead of being overcome with gratitude and excitement, this cold, quiet girl was taking it all as quite an ordinary circumstance.  No wonder she, Louisa Anderton, felt aggrieved.

They had hardly time for any more words, for Mrs. Anderton had already put off her departure by the seven-twenty train from Applewood to Upminster on purpose to wait for Halcyone, and now proposed to catch the one at nine o’clock—­her fly still waited in the courtyard—­and they made rapid arrangements.  Halcyone, accompanied by Priscilla, was to meet her the next day at the Upminster junction at eleven o’clock, and they would journey to London together.

And all the while Halcyone was agreeing to this she was thinking, if in the improbable circumstance that she should get no letter in the morning, it would be wiser to go to London.  There was her Cheiron, who would help her to get news.  But of course she would hear, and all would be well.

Thus she was enabled to unfreeze a little to her stepfather’s wife, who, as they said good-by at the creaking fly’s door, felt some of her soft charm.

“Perhaps she is shy,” she said to herself as she rolled towards the station.  “Anyway, it is restful, after Mabel’s laying down the law.”

That night Halcyone took her goddess to the little summer house upon the second terrace.

“If I start with John to-morrow, my sweet,” she said, “you will come with me as I have promised you.  But if I must go to that great, restless city, to find him, then you will wait for me here—­safe in your secret home.”  And then she looked out over the misty clover-grown pleasance to the country beyond bathed in brilliant moonlight.  And something in the beauty of it stilled the wild ache in her heart.  She would not admit into her thoughts the least fear, but some unexplained, unconquerable apprehension stayed in her innermost soul.  She knew, only she refused to face the fact, that all was not well.

Of doubt as to John Derringham’s intentions towards her, or his love, she had none, but there were forces she knew which were strong and could injure people, and with all her fearlessness of them, they might have been capable of causing some trouble to her lover—­her lover who was ignorant of such things.

She stayed some time looking at the beautiful moonlit country, and saying her prayers to that God Who was her eternal friend, and then she got up to steal noiselessly to bed.

But as she was opening the secret door, to have one more look at the sky, after she had replaced Aphrodite in the bag, it seemed as though her lover’s voice called her in anguish through the night:  “Halcyone!” and again, “Halcyone!  My love!”

She stopped, petrified with emotion, and then rushed back onto the terrace.  But all was silence; and, wild with some mad fear, she set off hurriedly, never stopping until she came to their trysting tree.  But here there was silence also, only the nightingale throbbed from the copse, while the faint rustle of soft zephyrs disturbed the leaves.