“Yes, I was sorry to miss you,” Jack answered slowly, his eyes on his friend’s face. He could not quite understand matters. The girl’s embarrassment had been almost a revelation to him, and yet it flashed across his mind now that the cause of it might have been only the quarrel between her father and the rector. The same thing might account for Lindo’s shy, ungenial manner. And yet—and yet he could not quite understand it, and, whether he would or no, his face grew hard. “You heard I had looked in?” he added. “Yes; Mrs. Baker told me,” Lindo answered, moving to let some one pass him, and glancing aside to smile a recognition. “She looks the better for the change, I think.” “Yes; she gets more fresh air now.” “It does not seem to have done you much good.” “No?” Certainly there was something amiss. These were old, tried college friends, or had been so a few weeks back, and they had nothing more to say to one another than this! The rector’s self-consciousness began to infect the other, sowing in his mind he knew not what suspicions. So that, if ever words of Daintry’s were welcome, they were welcome now. “Jack is going to stay a week,” she said inconsequently, standing on one leg the while with her arm through Jack’s and her big eyes on the rector’s face. “I am very glad to hear it,” Lindo rejoined. “He will find me at home more than once in the week, I hope.” “I will come and try,” said Jack. “Of course you will!” replied the rector, with a flash of his old manner. “I shall be glad if you will remind him of his promise, Miss Bonamy.” Kate murmured that she would. “You like your house?” said Jack. “Oh, very much—very much indeed.” “It is an improvement on No. 383?” continued the barrister, rather drily. “It is—very much so!” The words were natural. They were the words Jack would have expected. But, unfortunately, Gregg at that moment passed the rector’s elbow, and the latter’s manner was cold and shy—almost as if he resented the reference to his old life. Jack thought he did, and his lip curled. Fortunately, Daintry again intervened. “Here is Miss Hammond,” she said. “She is looking for you, Mr. Lindo.” The rector turned as Laura, threading her way through the press, came smiling toward him. She glanced with some curiosity at Jack, and then nodded graciously to Kate, whom she knew at the Sunday school and from meeting her on such occasions as this. “How do you do, Miss Bonamy?” she said pleasantly. “Will you pardon me carrying off the rector? We want him to come to tea.” Kate bowed, and the rector took off his hat to the girls. Then he waved an awkward farewell toward Jack, muttered “See you soon!” and went off with his captor.