“I shan’t go unless I hear again that it is serious,” she said stiltedly.

“Not—­go!” Gladys’s voice sounded somehow blank, there was a curious expression in her eyes.  After a moment she looked away.  “Oh, well, you must please yourself, of course.”

Christine turned to the door—­she held Sangster’s letter in her hand.

“Besides,” she said flippantly, “I’m going over to Heston this afternoon with Mr. Kettering.”

She went up to her room and shut the door.  She stood staring before her with blank eyes, her pretty face had fallen again into sadness, her mouth dropped pathetically.

She opened Sangster’s letter and read it through once more.  Was Jimmy really ill, and was Sangster afraid to tell her, she wondered?  Or was this merely Sangster’s way of trying to bring them together again?

But Jimmy did not want her; even if he were dying Jimmy would not want to see her again.

If he had cared he would never have consented to this separation; if he had cared—­but, of course, he did not care!

She began to cry softly; big tears ran down her cheeks, and she brushed them angrily away.

She had tried to shut him out of her heart.  She had tried to forget him.  In a defensive, innocent way she had deliberately encouraged Kettering.  She liked him, and he helped her to forget; it restored her self-esteem to read the admiration in his kind eyes, it helped to soothe the hurt she had suffered from Jimmy’s hands; and yet, in spite of it all, he was not Jimmy, and nobody could ever take Jimmy’s place.  She kept away from Gladys till lunch time, when at last she appeared, her eyes were red and swollen, and she held her head defiantly high.  Gladys considerately let her alone.  Somehow, in spite of everything, she quite expected to hear that Christine was off to London by the afternoon train, but the meal passed almost in silence, and when it was finished Christine said: 

“We’d better get ready; Mr. Kettering will be there at two.”

Gladys turned away.

“I’d rather not go, if you don’t mind,” she said uncomfortably.

“Not—­go!”

“No—­I—­I don’t care about motoring.  I—­I’ve got a headache too.”

Christine stared at her, then she laughed defiantly.

“Oh, very well; please yourself.”

She went upstairs to dress; she took great pains to make herself look pretty.  When Kettering arrived she noticed that his eyes went past her gloomily as if looking for someone else.

“Gladys is not coming,” she said.

His face brightened.

“Not coming!  Ought I to be sorry, I wonder?”

She laughed.

“That’s rude.”

“I’m sorry.”  He tucked the rug round her, and they started away down the drive.  “You don’t want the wheel, I suppose?” he asked whimsically.

Christine shook her head.

“Have you—­you been crying?” Kettering asked abruptly.