And that afternoon she had had to acknowledge that there was something wrong with Dick.  No.  Between Dick and herself.  There was a formality in his speech to her, an aloofness that seemed to ignore utterly their new intimacy.  He was there, but he was miles away from her.  She tried hard to feel indignant, but she was only hurt.

Peace seemed definitely to have abandoned the Wheeler house.  Then late in the evening a measure of it was restored when Nina and Leslie effected a reconciliation.  It followed several bad hours when Nina had locked her door against them all, but at ten o’clock she sent for Leslie and faced him with desperate calmness.

To Elizabeth, putting cold cloths on her mother’s head as she lay on the bed, there came a growing conviction that the relation between men and women was a complicated and baffling thing, and that love and hate were sometimes close together.

Love, and habit perhaps, triumphed in Nina’s case, however, for at eleven o’clock they heard Leslie going down the stairs and later on moving about the kitchen and pantry while whistling softly.  The servants had gone, and the air was filled with the odor of burning bread.  Some time later Mrs. Wheeler, waiting uneasily in the upper hall, beheld her son-in-law coming up and carrying proudly a tray on which was toast of an incredible blackness, and a pot which smelled feebly of tea.

“The next time you’re out of a cook just send for me,” he said cheerfully.

Mrs. Wheeler, full and overflowing with indignation and the piece of her mind she had meant to deliver, retired vanquished to her bedroom.

Late that night when Nina had finally forgiven him and had settled down for sleep, Leslie went downstairs for a cigar, to find Elizabeth sitting there alone, a book on her knee, face down, and her eyes wistful and with a question in them.

“Sitting and thinking, or just sitting?” he inquired.

“I was thinking.”

“Air-castles, eh?  Well, be sure you put the right man into them!” He felt more or less a fool for having said that, for it was extremely likely that Nina’s family was feeling some doubt about Nina’s choice.

“What I mean is,” he added hastily, “don’t be a fool and take Wallie Sayre.  Take a man, while you’re about it.”

“I would, if I could do the taking.”

“That’s piffle, Elizabeth.”  He sat down on the arm of a chair and looked at her.  “Look here, what about this story the Rossiter girl and a few others are handing around about Dick Livingstone?  You’re not worrying about it, are you?”

“I don’t believe it’s true, and it wouldn’t matter to me, anyhow.”

“Good for you,” he said heartily, and got up.  “You’d better go to bed, young lady.  It’s almost midnight.”

But although she rose she made no further move to go.

“What I am worrying about is this, Leslie.  He may hear it.”