Pamela in love with Arthur Chicksands! And she remembered that a faint idea of it had once crossed her mind, only to be entirely dismissed and forgotten. 'But I ought to have seen--I ought to have known! Am I really a vampire?' And she remembered how she, in her first youth, had suffered from the dominance and the accomplishment of older women; women who gave a girl no chance, who must have all the admiration, and all the opportunities, who would coolly and cruelly snatch a girl's lover from her. 'And that's how I've appeared to Pamela!' thought Elizabeth between laughing and crying. 'Yet all I did was to talk about ash for aeroplanes! Oh, you poor child--you poor child!' She seemed to feel Pamela's pain in her own heart--she who had had love and lost it. 'Am I just an odious, clever woman?' She sat down and hated herself. All the passing vanity that had been stirred in her by Sir Henry's compliments, all the natural pleasure she had taken in the success of her great adventure as a business woman, in the ease with which she, the Squire's paid secretary, had lately begun to lead the patriotic effort of an English county--how petty, how despicable even, it seemed, in presence of a boy who had given his all!--even beside a girl in love! And the Squire--'Was I hard to him too?' The night came down. All the strange or beautiful shapes in the library wavered and flickered under the firelight--the glorious Nikê--the Erôs--the noble sketch of the boy in his cricketing dress.... * * * * * The following morning came a telegram from Aubrey Mannering to Mrs. Gaddesden. Elizabeth had done her best to propitiate her but she remained cold and thorny, and when the telegram came she was pleased that the news came to her first, and--tragic as it was--that Elizabeth had to ask her for it! 'Terrible wounds. Fear no hope. We shall bring him home as soon as possible.' But an hour later arrived another--from the Squire to Elizabeth. 'Have a bed got ready in the library. Desmond's wish. Also accommodation near for surgeon and nurses. May be able to cross to-morrow. Will wire.' But it was nearly two days before the final message arrived--from Pamela to her sister. 'Expect us 7.20 to-night.' By that time the ground-floor of the west wing had been transformed into a temporary ward with its adjuncts, under the direction of a Fallerton doctor, who had brought Desmond into the world and pulled him through his childish illnesses. Elizabeth had moved most of the statues, transferred the Sargent sketch to the drawing-room, and put all the small archæological litter out of sight. But the Nikê was too big and heavy to be moved, and Elizabeth remembered that Desmond had always admired 'the jolly old thing' with its eager outstretched wings and splendid brow. Doctor Renshaw shook his head over the library as a hospital ward, and ordered a vast amount of meticulous cleaning and disinfection.