This day was no exception to the rule, and for reasons that can be well understood the young Romillys positively jumped at the invitation. It would be freedom from the atmosphere that seemed to spoil everything at the Bell House. True to Adrian’s suggestion, Mrs. Romilly had ignored the mystery of the diamond brooch. She treated Pamela as always--or tried to. But she was pale and absent in manner, and it was a daily stab to poor Pam to look up suddenly and find her mother’s eyes watching her with a sort of appeal in their blue depths. Pamela on her part was obviously unhappy, her small face was smaller still, and her grey-blue eyes looked darker. In spite of the heroic efforts of the elder pair, who pulled the business of life along like a pair of well-matched horses, it was not the same perfectly happy life that it had been in the spring and always before in the memory of the children. Miss Lasarge saw there was something the matter, but the Romilly family had the sense to wash its own linen at home. No one in the house "confided" woes outside. Also, Miss Lasarge had, at the time, considerable anxiety on her own shoulders, which she kept to herself, of course; the sympathy being no less for everybody. So she asked them to tea, and they came. And the party was one of the most perfect she had ever invented, with rose petals in all shades of pink making a pattern round the delightful dishes. Tongues were loosened by the sense of festivity, even Hughie talked; everybody talked, except Pamela, who looked tired. They stayed until after six o’clock, and then the Little Pilgrim walked down to the gate with them. Outside in the road they stood talking over the gate, as people do loath to go. Adrian was talking about the yawl, he and Christobel laughing over some of the adventures. "We go out most days," he said. Miss Lasarge looked towards the west and the clear sky over the sea. "It is promising for to-morrow?" she asked; her gaze wandered to the white wall over the road, that high glass-topped wall that enclosed Woodrising. "Oh, rather!" "Don’t you think you are very lucky?" She asked this question suddenly of Addie, in the soft hesitating tone natural to her. "Lucky, I should think so! It’s awfully jolly of Sir Marmaduke to let us have _Messenger_." "I was thinking of something bigger than that--I mean, _wider_--than just a yacht. It’s the _freedom_, Adrian. Of the sea, of the shore, of the woods--that’s what I meant. You see, there are prisoners." "Oh, not _now_, Little Pilgrim," Christobel expostulated, "we’ve got them all home, thank God, by this time." "Ours! Oh, yes, I hope we have, I believe we have; but I was thinking----" "Miss Anne, please don’t ask us to feel--well, sentimental--about German prisoners," said Adrian in rather a hard voice; he was digging a hole in the road with his stick, as a vent for his feelings, "they’ve had a good time in England."