He guessed that some hint of Stella Croyle’s story had reached the girl’s ears.  He understood that she would be hurt, and affronted; that she would feel herself suddenly steeped in vulgarities; and that she would visit her resentment sharply upon her lover, and upon herself at the same time.  And all this was true.  But Martin was not sure of it.  He meant to tread warily, lest if he stumbled, the harm should be the more complete.

“I have known Harry Luttrell a long while,” he said.  “No woman ever reached his heart until he came home from France this summer.  No woman I believe, could have reached it—­not even you, Joan, I believe, if you had met him a year ago.  He was possessed by one great shame and one great longing—­shame that the regiment with which he and his father were bound up, had once disgraced itself—­longing for the day to come when it would recover its prestige.  Those two emotions burnt in him like white flames.  I believe no other could have lived beside them.”

Joan would not speak, but she concentrated all her senses to listen.  A phrase which Stella Croyle had used—­Harry had feared to become “the slovenly soldier”—­began to take on its meaning.

“On the Somme the shame was wiped out.  Led by such men as Harry—­well, you know what happened.  Harry Luttrell came home freed at last from an overwhelming obsession.  He looked about him with different eyes, and there you were!  It seems to me a thing perfectly ordained, as so few things are.  I brought him down here just for a pleasant week in the country—­without another thought beyond that.  All this week I have been coming to think of myself as an unconscious agent, who just at the right time is made to do the right thing.  Here was the first possible moment for Harry Luttrell—­and there you were in the path—­just as if you without knowing it, had been set there to wait until he came over the fields to you.”

He turned to her and took her hand in his.  He had his sympathies for Stella Croyle, but her hopes held no positive promise of happiness for either her or Harry Luttrell—­a mere flash and splutter of passion at the best, with all sorts of sordid disadvantages to follow, quarrels, the scorn of his equals, the loss of position, the check to advancement in his profession.  Here, on the other hand, was the fitting match.

“It would be a great pity,” he said gently, “if anything were now to interfere.”

He stood up and after a moment Joan rose to her feet.  There was a tender smile upon her lips and her eyes were shining.  She laid a hand upon his arm.

“I shall have to get you a wife, Martin,” she said, midway between laughter and tears.  “It wouldn’t be fair on us if you were to escape.”

This was her way of thanking him.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE LONG SLEEP

The amazing incident which cut so sharply into these tangled lives occurred the next morning at Rackham Park.  Some of the house party straggled down to a late breakfast, others did not descend at all.  Harry Luttrell joined Millie Splay upon the stairs and stopped her before she entered the breakfast-room.