Stella Croyle was inclined to think that the world was banded against her, to deceive her and to do her harm.  They had all been engaged, Hardiman and the rest of them, in keeping Harry Luttrell away from her:  in defending him, whether he wished it or not, from the wiles of the enchantress.  Stella Croyle was quick enough in the up-take where her wounded heart was not concerned, but she was never very clear in any judgment which affected Harry Luttrell.  Passion and disappointment and hope drew veils between the truth and her, and she dived below the plain reason to this or that far-fetched notion for the springs of his conduct.  Almost she had persuaded herself that Harry Luttrell, by the powerful influence of friends, was being kept against his will from her side.  Her anger against Hillyard had sprung, not from the mere fact that he had lied to her, but from her fancy that he had joined the imaginary band of her enemies.  She understood now that in this she had been wrong.

“I see,” she said gently.  “It was to spare me pain?”

“Yes.”

Suddenly Stella Croyle laughed—­and with triumph.  She showed to Hillyard a face from which all the anger had gone.

“You need not have been so anxious to spare me.  Harry is coming here this afternoon.”

She saw the incredulity flicker in Hillyard’s eyes, but she did not mind.

“Yes,” she asserted.  “He goes down this evening to a camp in the New Forest where his battalion is waiting to go to France.  He starts at six from Waterloo.  He promised to run in here first.”

Hillyard looked at the clock.  It was already half-past four.  He had not the faintest hope that Luttrell would come.  Stella had no doubt pressed him to come.  She had probably been a little importunate.  Luttrell’s promise was an excuse, just an excuse to be rid of her—­nothing more.

“Luttrell has probably a great deal to do on this last afternoon,” he suggested.

“Of course, he won’t be able to stay long,” Stella Croyle agreed.  “Still, five minutes are worth a good deal, aren’t they, if you have waited for them two years?”

She was impenetrable in her confidence.  It clothed her about like armour.  Not for a moment would she doubt—­she dared not!  Harry was coming back to the house that afternoon.  Would he break something—­some little china ornament upon the mantel-shelf?  He generally knocked over something.  What would it be to-day, the mandarin with the nodding head, or the funny little pot-bellied dwarf which she had picked up at Christie’s the day before?  Stella smiled delightedly as she selected this and that of her little treasures for destruction.  Oh, to-day Harry Luttrell could sweep every glass or porcelain trinket she possessed into the grate—­when once he had passed through the doorway—­when once again he stood within her room.  She sat with folded hands, hope like a rose in her heart, sure of him, so sure of him that she did not even watch the hands of her clock.