It had begun already, but she did not tell him so.  “I would rather go to church,” she said.

Max looked stubborn.

“I always do go,” she protested into his silence.  “It will do me good to go.”

“All right,” he said, with his one-sided smile.  “Then I must go too, that’s all.”

“What for?” she asked quickly.

“To bring you home again when you begin to be ill.”

“I’m not going to be ill!” she declared indignantly.

“No,” he said.  “And you’re not going to church either.  I’m sorry to thwart your pious intentions, but in your father’s absence—­”

“Oh, don’t begin that!” she broke in irritably.

“Well, don’t you be silly!” said Max good-humouredly.  “You know you don’t really want to go.  It’s only because you are cross with me.”

“It isn’t!” she said.

“All right.  It isn’t.  Now go and lie down like a good child!  I shall come and prescribe for you if you don’t.”

Was it mockery that glinted in his eyes as he thus smilingly quelled her resistance?  She asked herself the question as she slowly mounted the stairs.  It was a look she had come to know singularly well of late, a look that she resented instinctively because it made her feel so small and puny.  It was a look that told her more decidedly than any words that he would have his way with her, resist him as she might.

She heard the church-bells ringing as she went to her room, but the impulse to obey their summons had wholly left her.  She lay down wearily upon her bed.  She wished there were not so many problems in life.  She had an uneasy sensation as of being caught in the endless meshes of an invisible net that compassed her whichever way she turned.

She did not sleep, but the rest did her good.  Undeniably it had been a tiring day.  It was growing dark when a tentative scratch at the door told her of Nick’s presence there.

She called him eagerly in.  “Has Sir Kersley gone?  I hope he didn’t think me rude.  Max made such a fuss about my resting.  So I thought—­”

“Quite right, my chicken!” Nick came softly to her side.  “Max explained your absence.  How’s the head?”

“Oh, it’s all right now.  Nick, how soon will Dad and Muriel get your letters?”

“The day after to-morrow,” said Nick.

She took his hand and squeezed it.  “And we shall hear—­when?”

“On Thursday night—­with luck,” said Nick.

She carried the hand impulsively to her lips.  “Nick, you are a darling!”

He laughed.  “Same to you!  But we won’t count on it too much or we may find ourselves crying for the moon, which is the silliest amusement I know.  How do you like Sir Kersley Whitton?”

“Oh, very much.  You heard about—­about Violet’s mother having been engaged to him, I suppose?”

“He told me himself,” said Nick.

“What did he tell you, Nick?”