She stood at the window, looking out into the dull, respectable square.  She saw a man ascend the steps and ring on the hall door-bell, but he did not interest her.

“I shall find work to do,” she said, “soon.  I am grateful to you for—­for taking me in, for giving me asylum here for a time—­very, very grateful.  I know that you meant well when you brought that man and me face to face last night—­that man—­” She paused.

She could see him now, that man with eager and earnest pleading in his eyes, with hands outstretched to her, as he told her of his love.  And seeing him in memory, there came into her cheeks that flush that he had seen and remembered, and into her eyes the dewy, softness that banished all haughtiness, and made her for the moment the tender woman that she was.

“So,” she said, “so I shall find work to do, and I will go out again and earn my living and—­”

“There will be no need!” the General said.

“I cannot stop here and live on your charity!”

“There will be no need,” he repeated.

“Mr. Rankin,” announced a servant.  The door had opened, and the man she had been watching came in.

He shook hands with the General.

“Joan, this is Mr. Rankin.  Rankin, this is Miss Joan Meredyth.”

She turned to him and bowed slightly.

“You will allow me to congratulate you, Miss Meredyth.  Believe me, it is a great happiness to me that at last, after much diligent seeking, I have, thanks to the General here, found you.  General—­you have told her?” He broke off, for there was a puzzled look in the girl’s face.

“Told her nothing—­nothing,” said the General; “that’s your business.”

Strangely, their words aroused little or no curiosity in her mind.  What was it she had been told or not told, she did not know.  Somehow she did not care.  She saw a pair of pleading eyes, she saw the colour rise in a man’s cheeks.  She saw an outstretched hand, held pleadingly to her, and she had repulsed that hand in disdain.

But Mr. Rankin was talking.

“Your uncle, on his way back to this country, died on board ship.  His only son was killed, poor fellow, in the War.  There was no one else, the will leaves everything to you unconditionally.  Through myself he had purchased the old place, Starden Hall, only a few months before his death, and it was his intention to live there.  So the house and the money become yours, Miss Meredyth.  There is Starden, and the income of roughly fifteen thousand a year, all unconditionally yours.”

And listening, dazed for the moment, there came into her mind an unworthy thought—­a thought that brought a sense of shame to her, yet the thought had come.

Did that man—­last night—­know of this, of this fortune when he had told her that he loved her?

A few days had passed, days that had found Joan fully occupied with the many matters connected with her inheritance.