“But you are doing your best for your country,” she would say.

“I’m not fighting for it, or getting smashed up for it.  I don’t want to be a hero, but I’d like to have had one good bang at them before I quit.”

Once she had found him in the hut, with his head on a table.  He said he had a toothache.

Well, that was all over.  She was back in her grandfather’s house, and—­

“He’ll get me too, probably,” she reflected, as she went down the stairs, “just as he’s got all the others.”

Mademoiselle was in Lily’s small sitting room, while Castle was unpacking under her supervision.  The sight of her uniforms made Lily suddenly restless.

“How you could wear these things!” cried Mademoiselle.  “You, who have always dressed like a princess!”

“I liked them,” said Lily, briefly.  “Mademoiselle, what am I going to do with myself, now?”

“Do?” Mademoiselle smiled.  “Play, as you deserve, Cherie.  Dance, and meet nice young men.  You are to make your debut this fall.  Then a very charming young man, and marriage.”

“Oh!” said Lily, rather blankly.  “I’ve got to come out, have I?  I’d forgotten people did such things.  Please run along and do something else, Castle.  I’ll unpack.”

“That is very bad for discipline,” Mademoiselle objected when the maid had gone.  “And it is not necessary for Mr. Anthony Cardew’s granddaughter.”

“It’s awfully necessary for her,” Lily observed, cheerfully.  “I’ve been buttoning my own shoes for some time, and I haven’t developed a spinal curvature yet.”  She kissed Mademoiselle’s perplexed face lightly.  “Don’t get to worrying about me,” she added.  “I’ll shake down in time, and be just as useless as ever.  But I wish you’d lend me your sewing basket.”

“Why?” asked Mademoiselle, suspiciously.

“Because I am possessed with a mad desire to sew on some buttons.”

A little later Lily looked up from her rather awkward but industrious labors with a needle, and fixed her keen young eyes on Mademoiselle.

“Is there any news about Aunt Elinor?” she asked.

“She is with him,” said Mademoiselle, shortly.  “They are here now, in the city.  How he dared to come back!”

“Does mother see her?”

“No.  Certainly not.”

“Why ‘certainly’ not?  He is Aunt Elinor’s husband.  She isn’t doing anything wicked.”

“A woman who would leave a home like this,” said Mademoiselle, “and a distinguished family.  Position.  Wealth.  For a brute who beats her.  And desert her child also!”

“Does he really beat her?  I don’t quite believe that, Mademoiselle.”

“It is not a subject for a young girl.”

“Because really,” Lily went on, “there is something awfully big about a woman who will stick to one man like that.  I am quite sure I would bite a man who struck me, but—­suppose I loved him terribly —­” her voice trailed off.  “You see, dear, I have seen a lot of brutality lately.  An army camp isn’t a Sunday school picnic.  And I like strong men, even if they are brutal sometimes.”