"Rubbish!" she said, and laughed unnaturally, and freed herself from his touch and walked away to the window. Norah's voice came from the orchard, calling him, and he went out through the door. Lady Joan sat on the window ledge and thought over what he had been saying, and then about the words of her letter to Jack, and then that it was time to walk back to the Court and speak about the mending of a certain fence to the man. And finally she thought about nothing at all as she yielded to the drowsiness of the hot spring morning, and rested her cheek against a background of green creepers and became conscious of nothing but a confused medley of well-known sounds,--the loud ticking of the clock in the way trifles assert their importance after an event, the tuneless humming of the child on the floor, the warning bell of the postman's bicycle as he came round the corner of the street, and the splash of the ducks he frightened into the pond as he came. Then she raised her heavy eyelids, and saw the musician looking at her with a strange, frightened expression on his face. "Yes?" she said quickly, with a tight feeling at her breast. He had a telegram in his hand. "Joan, dear, can you bear to hear something? I--I know I am a weak fool, but some one must tell you, and Norah won't, and I would sooner die than give you any pain, but--Joan--" His agitation and her own anxiety almost made her hate him. "Tell me what there is to tell," she cried fiercely, and snatched at the telegram, and then recoiled from it as it fluttered away on the floor. "No, don't!" she said the instant after, "I think I know it. Jack--" "Yes, dear. That is it. Jack will never--Jack will never have your letter," and the musician put out his hand to her. She did not take it, nor heed him. "It was a railway accident--they have not cabled much," he faltered; but she did not help him by a word or a look, and they stood silent for an interminable minute. Then she spoke through her dry lips with a little forced laugh. "What a pity I did not wait for the next mail," she said; "what a character for constancy I might have had!" He had just time to put out his arm to catch her as she fell suddenly forward. * * * * *