“It shall all be left just as it is now,” he told her.

“Perhaps some day you’ll marry, and your wife will want it altered,” she said sadly.

“I shall never get married,” he had answered quickly.

She had been glad to hear him say that; he was so nice as a friend, somehow she did not want anyone to come along and change him.

She went into the house and called to Gladys.

“I thought you would think we were lost perhaps,” she said laughingly, as she thrust her head into the morning-room where Gladys was sitting.

The elder girl looked up; her voice was rather dry when she answered: 
“No, I did not think that.”

Christine threw her hat aside.

“I can’t drive a bit,” she said petulantly.  “I’m so silly!  I nearly ran into the wall at the gate.”

“Did you?”

“Yes.  Gladys, we’re going over to Heston at two o’clock with Mr. Kettering.”

Gladys looked up.

“We!  Who do you mean by ’we’?”

“You and I, of course.”

“Oh”—­there was a momentary silence, then:  “There’s a letter for you on the table,” said Gladys.

Christine turned slowly, a little flush of colour rushing to her cheeks.  She glanced apprehensively at the envelope lying face upwards, then she drew a quick breath, almost of relief it seemed.

She picked the letter up indifferently and broke open the flap.  There was a moment of silence; Gladys glanced up.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

Christine was staring out of the window, the letter lay on the floor at her feet.

“Jimmy’s ill,” she said listlessly.

“Ill!” Gladys laid down her pen and swung round in the chair.  “What’s the matter with him?” she asked rather sceptically.

“I don’t know.  You can read the letter, it’s from Mr. Sangster—­Jimmy’s great friend.”

She handed the letter over.

Gladys read it through and gave it back.

“Humph!” she said with a little inelegant sniff; she looked at her friend.  “Are you going?” she asked bluntly.

Christine did not answer.  She was thinking of Jimmy, deliberately trying to think of the man whom she had done her best during the last three weeks to forget.  She tried to think of him as he had been that last dreadful night at the hotel, when he had threatened to strike her, when he had told her to clear out and leave him; but somehow she could only recall him as he had looked at Euston that morning when he said good-bye to her, with the hangdog, shamed look in his eyes, and the pathetic droop to his shoulders.

And now he was ill!  It was kind of Sangster to have written, she told herself, even while she knew quite well that Jimmy had not asked him to; it would be the last thing in the world Jimmy would wish.

If he were ill, it was not because he wanted her.  She drew her little figure up stiffly.