Lawrence kept his letter and read it often, but he did not go away. He liked feeling that he was there in the same city, breathing the same air, although she remained inexorable about seeing him. Often, in fits of despair, he thought he would go away, but always in the end he decided to remain. He bought a racing motor, and seemed to find some relief in flying madly over the county at a terrible pace. Three times he was had up for furious driving, and the third time his fine was the heaviest ever exacted for a like cause, and he received a strong reprimand as well and a threat that a fourth offence would be even more strenuously dealt with. He left the court laughing, and his friends began to wonder anxiously where his recklessness would end. Gwen returned to town about the time of the third offence, and remonstrated forcibly with him, but made no visible effect. “Have you seen Paddy again?” she asked him. “She will not see me.” Gwen knit her forehead in perplexity. “I have written, and she has not answered,” she said. “I don’t know what to make of her. I must go and see her.” “Not yet,” he said, and she looked up in surprise. His face, however, expressed nothing. “I wrote to her, and she answered it,” he continued, “and I do not want her to be worried about me for the present. Stay away for a little while, Gwen. I think she would rather you did.” So Gwen possessed her soul in patience for three weeks, to please Lawrence, and then went upon an unexpected errand. Paddy was roaming about restlessly that dreary winter afternoon at the beginning of February when Gwen came. She had been out in the morning, and she kept trying to make up her mind to go out again for something to do, but instead she continued to roam about with that odd feeling of unrest, quite unable to settle down to anything. Eileen and her mother had come back to London again now, but only until the spring quarter, when, the lease of their house was up, and they hoped to have done with London for good. The wedding was to take place in April, there was nothing to wait for, and several hearts eager enough to see it happily become a fact. The Ghan House was being renovated throughout, and Eileen was busy with her trousseau—no time to spare between January and April. Paddy helped a great deal. She did not like plain sewing—indeed, she very much disliked it, always contriving to prick herself badly and leave little danger signals, so to speak, where she had stitched. She might have been said to be preparing Eileen’s trousseau with her heart’s blood, only not with the meaning this phrase, beloved of serial writers, is generally intended to convey.