So, day after day, Johnny drove over to Starden, and when he came Helen would smile quietly and take herself off about some household duty, leaving the young people together. And Joan would greet him with a smile from which all coldness now had gone, for she accepted him as a friend. She saw his sterling worth, his honour and his honesty. He was like some great boy, so open and transparent was he. To her he had become “Johnny,” to him she was “Joan.” To-day they were wandering up and down the garden paths, side by side. The garden lay about them, glowing in the sunshine of the early afternoon. Beyond the high bank of hollyhocks and the further hedge of dark yew, clipped into fantastic form, one could catch a glimpse of the old house, with its steep sloping roof, its many gables, its whitened walls, lined and crossed by the old timbers. The hum of the bees was in the air, heavy with the fragrance of many flowers. And Joan was thinking of a City office, of a man she hated and feared, a man with bold eyes and thick, sensual lips. And then her thoughts drifted away to another man, and she seemed to hear again the last word he had spoken to her—“Ungenerous.” And suddenly she shivered a little in the warm sunlight. “Joan, you are not cold. You can’t be cold,” Johnny said. She laughed. “No, I was only thinking of the past. There is much in the past to make one shiver, I think, and oh, Johnny, I was thinking of you too!” “Of me?” She nodded. “Helen was telling me how keen and eager you were about your farm, how difficult it was to get you to leave it for an hour.” She paused. “That—that was before you came here, the first time—and since then you have been here almost every day. Johnny, aren’t you wasting your time?” She looked at him with sweet seriousness. “I am wasting my time, Joan, when—when I am not with you!” he said, and his voice shook with sudden feeling, and into his face there came a wave of colour. “To be near you, to see you—” He paused. Down the garden pathway came a trim maidservant, who could never guess how John Everard hated her for at least one moment of her life. “A gentleman in the drawing-room, miss, to see you,” the girl said. “A gentleman to see me? Who?” “He would not give a name, miss. He said you might not recognise it. He wishes to see you on business.” Joan frowned. Who could it be? Yet it was someone waiting, someone here. “I shall not be long,” she said to Johnny, and perhaps was glad of the excuse to leave him. “I will wait till you come back, Joan.” She smiled and nodded, and hastened to the house and the drawing-room, and, opening the door, went in to find herself face to face with Philip Slotman. Philip Slotman, of all living people! She stared at him in amaze, almost doubting the evidence of her sight. What did he here? How dared he come here and thrust himself on her notice? How dared he send that lying message by the maid, that she might not recognise his name?