“There’s no sign of him,” Harold Jupp answered.

There were two more races, but the party from Rackham Park did not wait for them.  They drove over the flat country through Crawley and Horsham and came to the wooded roads between high banks where the foliage met overhead, and to the old stone bridges over quiet streams.  Harold Jupp was home from Egypt, Dennis Brown from Salonika, and as the great downs, with their velvet forests, seen now over a thick hedge, now in an opening of branches like the frame of a locket, the marvel of the English countryside in summer paid them in full for their peril and endurance.

“I have a fortnight, Miranda,” said Dennis, dropping a hand upon his wife’s.  “Think of it!”

“My dear, I have been thinking of nothing else for months,” she said softly.  Terrors there had been, nights and days of them, terrors there would be, but she had a fortnight now, perfect in its season, and in the meeting of old friends upon familiar ground—­a miniature complete in beauty, like the glimpses of the downs seen through the openings amongst the boughs.

“Yes, a whole fortnight,” she cried and laughed, and just for a second turned her head away, since just for a second the tears glistened in her eyes.

The car turned and twisted through the puzzle of the Petworth streets and mounted on to the Midhurst road.  The three indefatigable race-goers found Lady Splay sitting with Martin Hillyard in the hall of Rackham Park.

“You had a good day, I hope,” she said.

“It was wonderful,” exclaimed Dennis Brown.  “We didn’t make any money except Miranda.  But that didn’t matter.”

“All our horses were down the course,” Harold Jupp explained.  “They weren’t running in their form at all”; and he added cheerfully:  “But the war may be over before the winter, and then we’ll go chasing and get it all back.”

Millicent Splay rang for tea, just as Joan Whitworth came into the hall.

“You didn’t see Colonel Luttrell then?” asked Lady Splay.

“No.”

“He’ll come down later then.”  She had an eye for Joan Whitworth as she spoke, but Joan was so utterly indifferent as to whether Colonel Luttrell would arrive or not that she could not stifle a sigh.  She had gathered Luttrell into the party with some effort and now it seemed her effort was to be fruitless.  Joan persisted in her mood of austere contempt for the foibles of the world.  She was dressed in a gown of an indeterminate shade between drab and sage-green, which did its best to annul her.  She had even come to sandals.  There they were now sticking out beneath the abominable gown.

“She can’t ruin her complexion,” thought Millicent Splay.  “That’s one thing.  But if she could, she would.  Oh, I would love to smack her!”

Joan, quite unaware of Millie Splay’s tingling fingers and indignant eyes, sat reading “Ferishtah’s Fancies.”  Other girls might set their caps at the soldiers.  Joan had got to be different.  She had even dallied with the pacifists.  Martin Hillyard had carried away so close a recollection of her on that afternoon when she had driven him through the golden sunset over Duncton Hill and of the brave words she had then spoken that he had to force himself to realise that this was indeed she.