Andy was very glad that she liked him, but he was glad of it because he liked her. His head was not turned by her assurance that he was attractive in a general sense: in the first place, because he remained distinctly sceptical as to the correctness of her opinion, sincere as it obviously was; in the second, because the matter did not appear to be one of much moment. No doubt folks sometimes did one a good turn for love's sake, but, taking the world broadly, a man had to make his way without relying on such help as that. That sort of help had given him a fair start now. He was not going to expect any more of it. It seemed to him that Jack Rock--or Jack and the Nun between them?--had already given him more than his share. It was curious to associate her with Jack Rock in the work; a queer freak of chance that she had come into it! But she had come into it--by chance and her own wilful fancy. Odd her share in it certainly was, but it was not unpleasant to him. He felt that he had gained a friend, as well as an opening in Gilly Foot's publishing house. "But I wish," he found himself reflecting as he travelled back in the Underground, "that she understood Harry better." Here he fell into an error unusual with him; he overrated his own judgment, led thereto by old love and admiration. The Nun had clear eyes; she had seen much of Harry Belfield, and no small amount of life. She had had to dodge many dangers. She knew what she was talking about. In all the side of things she knew so well, Andy, with his one attachment before he left South Africa long ago, was an innocent. Perhaps it was some dim consciousness of this, some half-realized feeling that he was on strange ground where she was on familiar, which made him find it difficult to get what she had said or hinted out of his head. It was apt to come back to him when he saw Vivien Wellgood; an unlooked-for association in his mind of people who seemed far remote from one another. Thus the Nun had come into the old circle of his thoughts; henceforward she too belonged, in a way, to the world of Meriton. Chapter XI. THE SHAWL BY THE WINDOW. Vivien and Isobel were alone at Nutley. It had been Wellgood's custom to go every summer to Norway by himself, leaving his daughter at school, to the care of her governess, or, for the last year or two, of her companion. He saw no reason against following his practice this year; indeed he was glad to go. The interval before the wedding dragged for him, as perhaps it did for others. He had carried matters with Isobel as far as he well could, unless he meant to carry them to the end--and it was not his intention to do that just yet. A last bachelor excursion--he told himself confidently that it was to be his last--had its attraction. Early in July he packed his portmanteau and went, leaving instructions with Isobel that her chaperonage was to be vigilant and strict. "Err on the safe side," he said. "No harm in that."