During the days that followed the announcement of Joan Meredyth’s engagement to John Everard, Connie watched the girl. She felt troubled, anxious, and yet scarcely could say why. She knew the girl’s passionate nature. Connie almost dreaded something reckless even tragic. She was more worried than she could say and of course she could not consult Johnny. There was no one to consult but Helen, and Helen did not understand Ellice in the least. Helen was inclined to look down on Ellice from her superior height as a wayward, wilful, foolish child—nothing more. “Send her away. I suppose she is really too old to go to school now, Connie. How old is she, sixteen?” “Eighteen.” “She has the heart and the body of a child.” “And the soul of a woman!” “Sometimes, Connie dear,” said Helen sweetly, “you make me almost angry. You actually seem to be siding with this foolish little thing!” Connie sighed. “In—in some ways I do. She loves him so, and I know it. I can’t be hard-hearted, I can’t blind myself to the truth. Of course, I know that Johnny’s marriage with Joan is the best thing in the world for both of them, but—” “But just because a stupid, self-willed girl of eighteen believes herself deeply in love with Johnny—Oh, Connie, do be your own reasonable self.” Johnny Everard, blind as most men are, did not notice how quiet and reserved Ellice had grown of late, how seldom she spoke to him, how when he spoke to her she only answered him in brief monosyllables, and how never came a smile now to her red lips, and certainly never a smile into her great dark eyes. He did not see what Connie saw—the heaviness about those eyes, the suggestion of tears during the night, when she came down silently to her breakfast. She had changed, and yet he did not see it, and if he had seen it might never guess at the cause. And Connie too, always kindly and gentle, always sweet and unselfish; during these days the girl’s unselfishness was something to wonder at. She had always loved Ellice; she had understood the child as none other had. And now there seemed to be a bond between them that drew them closer. Three years ago Johnny had bought a bicycle for Ellice. She had been going daily then to Miss Richmond’s school at Great Langbourne, three miles away, and he had bought the bicycle that she might ride to school and back again. Since she had left school the bicycle had remained untouched and rusted in one of the outhouses, but now Ellice had got the machine out and cleaned it and put new tyres on it. Deep down in her mind was a plan, as yet not wholly formed, a desperate venture that one day she might embark on, and the old bicycle was part of that plan, for she would need it to carry out the plan. She had not decided yet, not even if she would ever carry it out, but she might.