‘The last ounce of food, mind!—­that’s what it depends on,’ he said, smiling at her, ’which can stick it longest—­they or we.  You belong to the land—­ought you desert it?’

Pamela sat unmoved.  She knew nothing about the land.  Her father had the new agent—­and Miss Bremerton.

‘Your sister there,’ said Chicksands, nodding towards the front drawing-room, where Strang and his wife were sitting Darby and Joan over the fire discussing rations and food prices, ’thinks Miss Bremerton already overdone.’

‘I never saw the least sign of it!’

’But think!—­your father never slackens his Greek work—­and there is all the rest.’

‘I suppose if it’s too much for her she’ll give it up,’ said Pamela in her most obstinate voice.

But even then a normally tactful man still held on.

Never was anything more maladroit.  It was the stupidity of a clever fellow, deluding himself with the notion that having refused the role of lover, he could at least play that of guardian and adviser; whose conscience, moreover, was so absolutely clear on the subject of Elizabeth Bremerton that he did not even begin to suspect what was rankling In the girl’s morbid sense.

The relation between them accordingly went from bad to worse; and when Pamela rose and sharply put an end to their private conversation, the evening would have practically ended in a quarrel but for some final saving instinct on Chicksands’ part, which made him mention Desmond as he bade her good-night.

‘I could tell you where he is,’ he said gravely.  ’Only I mustn’t.  I had a note from him yesterday—­the dear old boy!  He wrote in the highest spirits.  His colonel was “ripping,” and his men, of course, the best in the whole battery.’

‘If you get any news—­ever—­before we do,’ said Pamela, suddenly choking, ‘you’ll tell us at once?’

‘Trust me.  He’s never out of my mind.’

On that her good-night was less cold than it would have been five minutes before.  But he walked home through the moonlit streets both puzzled and distressed—­till he reached his club in Pall Mall, where the news coming through on the tape quickly drove everything out of his soldier’s mind but the war.

* * * * *

Mrs. Gaddesden was sitting as usual in the hall at Mannering.  A mild February was nearly out.  It would be the first of March on the morrow.

Every moment she expected to hear the Fallerton taxi draw up at the front door—­bringing Elizabeth Bremerton back to Mannering.  She had been away more than a month.  Mrs. Gaddesden went back in thought to the morning when it had been announced to the Squire by his pale and anxious secretary that she had had bad news of her invalid mother, and must go home at once.  The Squire—­his daughter could not deny it—­had behaved abominably.  But of all of his fume and fret, his unreasonable complaints and selfish attempts to make her fix the