* * * * *

The month sped away very swiftly for Valerie.  Her companionship with Rita, her new friendship for Helene d’Enver, her work, filled all the little moments not occupied with Neville.  It had been a happy, exciting winter; and now, with the first days of spring, an excitement and a happiness so strange that it even resembled fear at moments, possessed her, in the imminence of the great change.

Often, in these days, she found herself staring at Neville with a sort of fixed fascination almost bordering on terror;—­there were moments when alone with him, and even while with him among his friends and hers, when there seemed to awake in her a fear so sudden, so inexplicable, that every nerve in her quivered apprehension until it had passed as it came.  What those moments of keenest fear might signify she had no idea.  She loved, and was loved, and was not afraid.

In early April Neville went to Ashuelyn.  Ogilvy was there, also Stephanie Swift.

His sister Lily had triumphantly produced a second sample of what she could do to perpetuate the House of Collis, and was much engrossed with nursery duties; so Stephanie haunted the nursery, while Ogilvy, Neville, and Gordon Collis played golf over the April pastures, joining them only when Lily was at liberty.

Why Stephanie avoided Neville she herself scarcely knew; why she clung so closely to Lily’s skirts seemed no easier to explain.  But in her heart there was a restlessness which no ignoring, no self-discipline could suppress—­an unease which had been there many days, now—­a hard, tired, ceaseless inquietude that found some little relief when she was near Lily Collis, but which, when alone, became a dull ache.

She had grown thin and spiritless within the last few months.  Lily saw it and resented it hotly.

“The child,” she said to her husband, “is perfectly wretched over Louis and his ignominious affair with that West girl.  I don’t know whether she means to keep her word to me or not, but she’s with him every day.  They’re seen together everywhere except where Louis really belongs.”

“It looks to me,” said Gordon mildly, “as though he were really in love with her.”

“Gordon!  How can you say such a thing in such a sympathetic tone!”

“Why—­aren’t you sorry for them?”

“I’m sorry for Louis—­and perfectly disgusted.  I was sorry for her; an excess of sentimentality.  But she hasn’t kept her word to me.”

“Did she promise not to gad about with him?”

“That was the spirit of the compact; she agreed not to marry him.”

“Sometimes they—­don’t marry,” observed Gordon, twirling his thumbs.

Lily looked up quickly; then flushed slightly.

“What do you mean, Gordon?”

“Nothing specific; anything in general.”

“You mean to hint that—­that Louis—­Louis Neville could be—­permit himself to be so common—­so unutterably low—­”