Oliver Tropenell opened the door, and as he walked across the room, his mother's heart quivered with jealous pain, and even with a feeling of secret, impotent anger, as she saw the eager, rapt look which lighted up his dark face. Laura held out her ringless right hand, but he only just touched it. "I'm sorry I'm late!" he exclaimed. "As a matter of fact I was reading a letter just come, by the second post, from Gillie." "I've written to Gillie to-day," Laura said quietly. It seemed such a long, long time since yesterday morning. She felt as if the extraordinary thing which had happened then had been blotted out. "Have you sent your letter off?" "No, not yet," she was surprised at the question. And then there fell a curious silence on those three people, till at last the door opened, and dinner was announced. "Oliver! Take in Laura," said Mrs. Tropenell. On the last occasion when the three had dined alone together there had been a little smiling discussion as to the order in which they should go into the dining-room. But that had been many weeks ago. They were not in such a light mood to-night, and yet--and yet, why should they not be? The hostess knew of no reason. The two paired off together, and Oliver's mother asked herself, for perhaps the thousandth time in the last three months, why she had allowed this--this friendship between her son and Laura Pavely to come about? It would have been so easy to arrange that she and her son should spend the summer abroad! When he had first come home there had been a talk of their going away together to Italy, or to France--France, which they had both loved when he was a clever, ardent, headstrong boy, with a strength of brain and originality of mind too big for his boyish boots. But the harm, what harm there was--sometimes she hoped it was not so very much harm after all--had been done quickly. By the end of that first month at home, Oliver had lost all wish to leave Freshley. In those early days--or was it that already he was being unconsciously hypocritical as men are wont to be when in such case as that in which he now found himself?--he had seemed to have formed an even closer friendship with Godfrey Pavely than with Godfrey Pavely's wife. They had even made a joint business expedition to town together, Godfrey as Oliver's guest, staying in one of those luxurious hotels which seem equally attractive to the millionaire and the adventurer. But Oliver had at last thrown off, when alone with his mother, any pretence of liking, far less of respecting, Godfrey Pavely. Yet when with the other man he still kept up the sinister fiction. She knew that. * * * * *