Then he was discovered--gassed and stunned--in a shell-hole, and there had been a long illness and convalescence. During the twenty-four hours when he was believed to be dead, Pamela had spent the April daylight in the depths of the Mannering woods, in tangled hiding-places that only she knew. It was in the Easter holidays. She was alone at Mannering with an old governess, while her father was in London. The little wrinkled Frenchwoman watched her in silence, whenever she was allowed to see her. Then when on the second morning there came a telegram from Chetworth, and Pamela tore it open, flying with it before she read it to the secrecy of her own room, the Frenchwoman smiled and sighed. 'Ca, c'est l'amour!' she said to herself, 'assurément c'est l'amour!' And when Pamela came down again, radiant as a young seraph, and ready to kiss the apple-red cheek of the Frenchwoman--the rarest concession!--Madame Guérin did not need to be told that Arthur Chicksands was safe and likely to be sound. But the Frenchwoman's inference was premature. During the two years she had been at school, Pamela had thought very little of Arthur Chicksands. She was absorbed in one of those devotions to a woman--her schoolmistress--very common among girls of strong character, and sometimes disastrous. In her case it had worked well. And now the period of extravagant devotion was over, and the girl's mind and heart set free. She thought she had forgotten Arthur Chicksands, and was certain he must have forgotten her. As it happened they had never met since his return to the front in the autumn of 1915--Pamela was then seventeen and a schoolgirl--or, as she now put it, a baby. She remembered the child who had hidden herself in the woods as something very far away. And yet she did not want to talk about 'Arthur,' as she had always called him, and there was a certain tremor and excitement in her mind about him. The idea of being prevented from seeing him was absurd--intolerable. She was already devising ways and means of doing it. It was really not to be expected that filial obedience should reign at Mannering. * * * * * The twins had long left the subject of the embargo on Chetworth, and were wrangling and chaffing over the details of Desmond's packing, when there was a knock at the door. Pamela stiffened at once. 'Come in!' Miss Bremerton entered. 'Are you very busy?' 'Not at all!' said Desmond politely, scurrying with his best Eton manners to find a chair for the newcomer. 'It's an awful muddle, but that's Pamela!' Pamela aimed a sponge-bag at him, which he dodged, and Elizabeth Bremerton sat down. 'I want to hold a council with you,' she said, turning a face just touched with laughter from one to the other. 'Do you mind?'