She hadn’t forgiven Radmore.  And yet, in a sense, she was readjusting her views and theories about him, for the simple reason that he, Godfrey Radmore, had changed so utterly.  From having been a hot-tempered, untameable, high-spirited boy, he was now, or so it seemed to her, a cool, restrained man of the world, old for his years.  In fact it was he who was now a stranger—­but a stranger who had most attractive manners, and who had somehow slipped very easily into their everyday life.  Janet liked his deferential manner to the master of the house, she enjoyed his kindly and good-humoured, if slightly satirical dealings with Jack and with pretty Rosamund, and she was very grateful to him for the way he treated queer, little Timmy, her own beloved changeling child.

And now something happened that touched her, and made her suddenly feel as if she was with the old Godfrey Radmore again.

“Look here,” he said, in a low, hesitating voice, “I want to tell you, Janet, that I didn’t know till yesterday about George.  You’ll think me a fool—­but somehow I always thought of him as being safe in India.”  And then with sudden passion he asked:—­“How can you say that everything is the same in Old Place with George not here?  Why, to me, George was as much part of Old Place as—­as Betty is!”

“We all thought you knew—­at least I wasn’t sure.”

“Thank God he didn’t think so poorly of me as that,” he muttered, and then he looked away, his eyes smarting with unshed tears.  “Nothing will ever be the same to me again without George in the world.”

As she said nothing, he went on with sudden passion:—­“Every other country in Europe has changed utterly since the War, but England seemed to me, till last night, exactly the same—­only rather bigger and more bustling than nine years ago.”  He drew a long breath.  “Timmy and I went into the post-office last evening, and Cobbett asked me to go in, and see his wife.  I thought I remembered her so well—­and when I saw her, Janet, I didn’t know her!  Then I asked after her boys—­and she told me.”

“It’s strange that a man who went through it all himself should feel like that,” she said slowly.

The door opened suddenly and Rosamund’s pretty head appeared:  “There’s a message come through saying that your car’s all right, and that it will be along in about an hour,” she exclaimed joyfully.  To Rosamund, Godfrey Radmore was in very truth a stranger, and a very attractive stranger at that.

As a rule, after breakfast, all the young people went their various ways, but this morning they were all hanging about waiting vaguely for Godfrey to come and do something with one or all of them.  Rosamund was longing to ask him whether he knew any of the London theatrical managers; Tom was wondering whether Godfrey would allow him to drive his car; Dolly and Timmy, as different in everything else as two human beings could well be, each desired to take him into the village and show him off to their friends.  The only one of the young people who was not really interested in Radmore was Jack Tosswill.  He was engaged just now in looking feverishly for an old gardening book which he had promised to lend Mrs. Crofton, and he was cursing under his breath because the book had been mislaid.