The house after Desmond’s departure settled dreamily down.  Pamela, with red eyes, retreated to the schoolroom, and began to clear up the debris left by the packing; Alice Gaddesden went to sleep in the drawing-room; Mrs. Strang wrote urgent letters to registry offices, who now seldom answered her; the Squire was in the library, and Elizabeth retreated early to her own room.  She spent a good deal of time in writing up a locked diary, and finishing up a letter to her mother.  Then she saw to her astonishment that it was nearly one o’clock, and began to feel sleepy.

The night was warm, and before undressing she put out her light, and threw up her window.  There was a moon nearly at the full outside, and across the misty stretches of the park the owls were calling.

Suddenly she heard a distant footstep, and drew back from the window.  A man was pacing slowly up and down an avenue of pollarded limes which divided the rose-garden from the park.  His figure could only be intermittently seen; but it was certainly the Squire.

She drew the curtains again without shutting the window; and for long after she was in bed she still heard the footstep.  It awakened many trains of thought in her—­of her own position in this household where she seemed to have become already mistress and indispensable; of Desmond’s last words with her; of the relations between father and son; of Captain Chicksands and his most agreeable company; of Pamela’s evident dislike of her, and what she could do to mend it.

As to Pamela, Elizabeth’s thoughts went oddly astray.  She was vexed with the girl for what had seemed to the elder woman her young rudeness to a gallant and distinguished man.  Why, she had scarcely spoken a word to him during the sitting on the hill!  In some way, Elizabeth supposed, Captain Chicksands had offended her—­had not made enough of her perhaps?  But girls must learn now to accept simpler and blunter manners from their men friends.  She guessed that Pamela was in that self-conscious, exalte mood of first youth which she remembered so well in herself—­fretting too, no doubt, poor child! over the parting from Desmond.  Anyway she seemed to have no particular interest in Arthur Chicksands, nor he in her, though his tone in speaking to her had been, naturally, familiar and intimate.  But probably he was one of those able men who have little to say to the young girl, and keep their real minds for the older and experienced woman.

At any rate, Elizabeth dismissed from her mind whatever vague notion or curiosity as to a possible love-affair for Pamela in that direction might have been lurking in it.  And that being so, she promptly, and without arriere pensee of any sort, allowed herself the pleasant recollection of half an hour’s conversation which had put her intellectually on her mettle, and quickened those infant ambitions of a practical and patriotic kind which were beginning to rise in her.