He was silent for a while, his eyes intent on the strip of road that stretched in front of him, and when he spoke again it was to draw her attention to the effect of the cloud shadows moving across the sea, exactly as though nothing of greater interest had been under discussion.

She began to recognize as a trick of his this abrupt method of terminating a conversation that for some reason did not please him.  It was as conclusive as when the man at the other end of the ’phone suddenly “rings off” without any preliminary warning.

By this time they had reached the steep hill that approached directly to the Selwyns’ house, and a couple of minutes later, Trent brought the car to a standstill at the gate.

“You have nothing to thank me for,” he said, curtly dismissing her expression of thanks as they stood together on the path.  “It is I who should be grateful to you.  My opportunities of social intercourse”—­drily—­“are somewhat limited.”

“Extend them, then, as I advised,” retorted Sara.

“Do you wish me to?” he asked swiftly, and his intent eyes sought her face with a sudden hawk-like glance.

Her own eyes fell.  She was conscious, all at once, of an inexplicable agitation, a tremulous confusion that made it seem a physical impossibility to reply.

But he still waited for his answer, and, at last, with an effort she mastered the nervousness that had seized her.

“I—­I—­yes, I do wish it,” she said faintly.

CHAPTER X

A MEETING AT ROSE COTTAGE

It had not taken Sara very long to cut a niche for herself in the household at Sunnyside.  In a dwelling where the master of the house was away the greater part of the day, the mistress a chronic invalid, and the daughter a beautiful young thing whose mind was intent upon “colour” and “atmosphere,” and altogether hazy concerning the practical necessities of housekeeping, the advent of any one possessing even half Sara’s intelligent efficiency would have been provocative of many reforms.

Dick Selwyn, pushed to the uttermost limits of his strength by the demands of his wide practice and by the nervous strain of combating his wife’s incessant fretfulness, quickly learned to turn to Sara for that sympathetic understanding which had hitherto been denied him in his home-life.

He had, of course, never again discussed with her his wife’s incurable self-absorption, as on the day of her arrival, when the painful scene created by Mrs. Selwyn had practically forced him into some sort of explanation, but Sara’s quick grasp of the situation had infinitely simplified matters, and by devoting a considerable amount of her own time to the entertainment of the captious invalid, and thus keeping her in a good humour, she contrived to save Selwyn many a bad half-hour of recrimination and complaint.

Sara was essentially a good “comrade,” as Patrick Lovell had recognized in the old days at Barrow Court, and instinctively Selwyn came to share with her the pin-prick worries that dog a man’s footsteps in this vale of woe, learning to laugh at them; and even his apprehensions concerning Molly’s ultimate development and welfare were lessened by the knowledge that Sara was at hand.