The groom touched his hat, took the money and the letters, and walked off, indulging in a grin when his face was turned away from the occupants of the carriage.

‘Shall I take the reins, Gladys?’ inquired George, with a very bright look on his face.  He perceived that, though there might be ‘rows,’ as he mentally expressed it, they would be of a mild nature, easily explained; the bolt had not fallen, if anything was to be gathered from her demeanour.

’No, thank you.  I dislike sitting idle in a carriage.  I always drive myself,’ she said calmly, and, with a rather tighter hand than usual on the reins, she turned the ponies’ heads, and even gave each a sharp flick with the whip, which sent them up the leafy road at a very smart pace.

’I have come to make my peace, Gladys, and it’s awfully good of you to send the fellow away,’ George began impressively.  ’I’m in luck, I tell you.  I pictured to myself a long dusty walk through the sunshine.’

’I sent him away because we had a long drive this morning, and I wanted Castor and Pollux to have an easier load to pull up the hill,’ she replied.  ’I suppose if I had allowed you to walk instead of William, it would have been rather rude.’

Her manner, though very calm and unruffled, was rather unpromising.  George looked at her a trifle anxiously, as if hardly sure how to proceed.

’Are you awfully angry with me, Gladys?  I always expected a letter from you.  I thought you were so angry with me that I was afraid to write.’

’You were quite wrong, then.  I was not angry at all.  But why should I have written when you did not?’

This was rather unanswerable, and he hesitated a moment over his next words.  He had to weigh them rather carefully for the ears of this singularly placid and self-possessed young lady, whose demeanour was so little index to her state of mind.

’Well, if I admit I was in the wrong all the time, though I really, upon my word, don’t know very well what the row was about, will you forgive me?’ he asked in his most irresistible manner, which was so far successful that the first approach to a smile he had seen since they met now appeared on her lips.

’You know very well what it was all about; you have not forgotten a word that passed, any more than I have,’ she answered.  ’But you ought to have written all the same.  I am generous enough to admit, however, that you had more reason on your side than I was induced to admit that night.  The experiment I tried has not been a success.  Have you heard that Lizzie Hepburn has run away from us?’

He swallowed the choking sensation in his throat, and answered, with what indifference he could command,—­

‘Yes, I heard it.’

‘And is that why you have come?’ she asked, with a keen, curious glance at him,—­’to crow over my downfall That is not generous in the least.’

’My darling, how can you think me capable of such meanness?  Would it not be more charitable to think I came to condole and sympathise with you?’