“Yes, and do you—­”

“And do I admire her?  Yes, I do, but I could wish she was just a little less cold, a little less stately, Con.”

“Perhaps it is shyness.  Remember, we are strangers to her; she was not cold and stately to me, Johnny.”

“Ah!” Johnny said, and went on staring straight ahead down the road.

“Did Helen say much to you, Con?”

“Oh, a good deal!”

“About”—­Johnny hesitated—­“her?”

“Yes, a little; she thinks a great deal of her.  She says that at first Joan seemed to hold her at arm’s length.  Now they understand one another better, and she says Joan has the best heart in the world.”

“Yet she seems cold to me,” said Johnny with a sigh.

Still, in spite of Joan’s coldness, he found his way over to Starden very often during the days that followed.  He had picked up a small secondhand car, which he strenuously learned to drive, and thereafter the little car might have been seen plugging almost daily along the six odd miles of road that separated Buddesby from Starden.

And each time he got the car out a pair of black eyes watched him with smouldering anger and passion and jealousy.  A pair of small hands were clenched tightly, a girl’s heart was aching and throbbing with love and hate and undisciplined passions, as though it must break.

But he did not see, though Constance did, and she felt troubled and anxious.  She had understood for long how it was with Ellice.  She had seen the girl’s eyes turned with dog-like devotion towards the man who was all unconscious of the passion he had aroused.  But she saw it all in her quiet way, and was anxious and worried, as a kindly, gentle, tender-hearted woman must be when she notices one of her own sex give all the love of a passionate heart to one who neither realises nor desires it.

So, day after day, Johnny drove over to Starden, and when he came Helen would smile quietly and take herself off about some household duty, leaving the young people together.  And Joan would greet him with a smile from which all coldness now had gone, for she accepted him as a friend.  She saw his sterling worth, his honour and his honesty.  He was like some great boy, so open and transparent was he.  To her he had become “Johnny,” to him she was “Joan.”

To-day they were wandering up and down the garden paths, side by side.

The garden lay about them, glowing in the sunshine of the early afternoon.  Beyond the high bank of hollyhocks and the further hedge of dark yew, clipped into fantastic form, one could catch a glimpse of the old house, with its steep sloping roof, its many gables, its whitened walls, lined and crossed by the old timbers.  The hum of the bees was in the air, heavy with the fragrance of many flowers.

And Joan was thinking of a City office, of a man she hated and feared, a man with bold eyes and thick, sensual lips.  And then her thoughts drifted away to another man, and she seemed to hear again the last word he had spoken to her—­“Ungenerous.”  And suddenly she shivered a little in the warm sunlight.