For her, there was again no sleep.  The weather had changed; through the open window breathed a cool, sweet air, very refreshing after the high temperature of the last few days; but Lady Ogram in vain closed her eyes and tried to lull her thoughts to rest.  It disappointed her that Dymchurch, in reply to her confidences, had spoken no decisive word.  Of course he would declare himself on the morrow; he would have every opportunity for private talk with May, and of the issue there could be no serious doubt.  But Lady Ogram’s nerves were tortured with impatience.  In the glimmer of dawn, she wished to rise and walk about, but found herself unequal to the effort.  Her head ached; her blood was feverish.  Though it was a thing she hated to do, she summoned the attendant who lay in an adjoining room.

At mid-day she was able to descend At the foot of the stairs, she encountered Constance Bride, who stood glancing over a book.

“What are they all doing?” was her first question.  And, before Constance could reply, she asked “Where is Lord Dymchurch?”

“I saw him not long ago in the garden.”

“Alone?”

“No, with Miss Tomalin.”

“Why didn’t you say so at once?  Where are the others?  Tell them I am down.”

Constance delayed replying for a moment, then said with cold respectfulness: 

“You will find Sir William and Lady Amys in the drawing-room.”

“I shall find them there, shall I?  And what if I don’t wish to go into the drawing-room?”

Constance looked into the angry face.  In the book she was carrying, a French volume arrived by post this morning, she had found things which troubled her mind and her temper; she was in no mood for submitting to harsh dictatorship.  But those blood-shot eyes and shrivelled lips, the hollow temples and drawn cheeks which told of physical suffering, stilled her irritation.

“I will tell them at once, Lady Ogram.”

Dymchurch and May Tomalin had strayed from the garden into the park.  They were sitting on a bench which encircled a great old tree.  For some minutes neither had spoken.  Dymchurch held in his hand a last year’s leaf, brown, crisp, but still perfect in shape; he smiled dreamily, and, as his eyes wandered to the girl’s face, said in a soft undertone: 

“How easily one loses oneself in idle thoughts!  I was asking myself where this grew—­on which branch, which twig; and it seemed strange to me that by no possibility could anyone discover it.”

May had not a very high opinion of her companion’s intelligence, but it struck her this morning he was duller than usual.  She humoured him, replying with her philosophical air: 

“No, indeed!  Yet we try to find out how life began, and what the world means.”

Dymchurch was pleased.  He liked to find her capable of such a reflection.  It encouraged the movements of vague tenderness which had begun to justify a purpose formed rather in the mind than in the heart.