Gillian, thrust rather into the position of an onlooker, watched the proceedings with amused eyes—­her amusement only tempered by the slightly apprehensive feeling concerning Magda of which she had been vaguely conscious from the first moment she had found her in Davilof’s company, and which continued to obsess her.

True, she no longer wore that set, still look which Gillian had observed on her face prior to Dan Storran’s appearance upon the scene.  But even when she smiled and talked, playing the men off one against the other with a deft skill that was inimitable, there seemed a curious new hardness underlying it all—­a certain reckless deviltry for which Gillian was at a loss to account.

June watched, too, with troubled eyes.  Half an hour ago she had been feeling ridiculously happy, comfortably assured in her own mind that this tall, rather exquisite foreigner and the woman whose presence in her home had occasioned so much bitter heart-burning were only hesitating, as it were, on the brink of matrimony.  And now—­now she did not know what to think!  Miss Vallincourt was treating Davilof with an airy negligence that to June’s honest and candid soul seemed altogether incompatible with such circumstances.

Meanwhile, with her own ears attuned to catch each varying shade of Dan’s beloved voice, she could not but perceive its change of quality, slight, but unmistakable, when he spoke to Magda—­the sudden deepening of it—­and the unconscious self-betrayal of his glance as it rested on her.  It was a relief when at last he got up and moved off, excusing himself on the plea that he had some work he must attend to.  As he shook hands with Davilof the eyes of the two men met, hard as steel and as hostile.

Storran’s departure was the signal for the breaking-up of the party.  June returned to the house, while Gillian allowed herself to be carried off by Coppertop to visit the calves, which were a never-failing source of interest to him.

Left alone, an awkward pause ensued between Davilof and Magda, backwash of the obvious clash of antagonism between the two men.

“So!” commented Davilof, at last.  “It looks as though there might be another Raynham episode down here before long.”

The colour rushed up into Magda’s face.

“Don’t you think that remark is in rather bad taste?” she replied icily.

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Perhaps it was.  But the men who love you get rather beyond considering the matter of good or bad taste.”

She made a petulant gesture.

“Oh, don’t begin that old subject again.  We’ve had it all out before.  It’s finished.”

“It’s not finished.”

There was a clipped, curt force about the brief denial.  The good-humoured, big-child mood in which Davilof had joyously narrated to her how he had circumvented the unfortunate Melrose had passed, leaving the man—­turbulent and passionately demanding as of old.