Diana had been better able latterly to devote herself to her work, as Errington had been out of England for a time.  So long as there was the likelihood of meeting him at any moment, her nerves had been more or less in a state of tension.  There was that between them which made it impossible for her to regard him with the cool, indifferent friendship which he himself seemed so well able to assume.  Despite herself, the sound of his voice, the touch of his hand, caused a curious little fluttering within her, like the flicker of a compass needle when it quivers to the north.  If he entered the same room as herself, she was instantly aware of it, even though she might not chance to be looking in his direction at the moment.  Indeed, her consciousness of him was so acute, so vital, that she sometimes wondered how it was possible that one person could mean so much to another and yet himself feel no reciprocal interest.  And that he did feel none, his unvarying indifference of manner had at last convinced her.

But, even so, she was unable to banish him from her thoughts.  This was the first day of her return to London after the Easter holidays, which she had spent as usual at Crailing Rectory, and already she was wondering rather wistfully whether Errington would be back in England during the summer.  She felt that if only she could know why he had changed so completely towards her, why the interest she had so obviously awakened in him upon first meeting had waned and died, she might be able to thrust him completely out of her thoughts, and accept him merely as the casual acquaintance which was all he apparently claimed to be.  But the restless, irritable longing to know, to have his incomprehensible behaviour explained, kept him ever in her mind.

Only once or twice had his name been mentioned between Olga Lermontof and herself, and on each occasion the former had repeated her caution, admonishing Diana to have nothing to do with him.  It almost seemed as though she had some personal feeling of dislike towards him.  Indeed Diana had accused her of it, only to be met with a quiet negative.

“No,” she had replied serenely.  “I don’t dislike him.  But I disapprove of much that he does.”

“He is rather an attractive person,” Diana ventured tentatively.

Olga Lermontof shot a keen glance at her.

“Well, I advise you not to give him your friendship,” she said, “or”—­sneeringly—­“anything of greater value.”

A sharp rat-tat at the door of her sitting-room recalled Diana’s wandering thoughts to the present.  She threw a glance of half-comic dismay at the state of her sitting-room—­every available chair and table seemed to be strewn with the contents of the trunks she was unpacking—­and then, with a resigned shrug of her shoulders, she crossed to the door and threw it open.  Bunty was standing outside.

“What is it?” Diana was beginning, when she caught sight of a pleasant, ugly face appearing over little Miss Bunting’s shoulder.  “Oh, Jerry, is it you?” she exclaimed delightedly.