“Yes: he’s coming. I’ve just heard. He arrives to-morrow. But that’s not----” She saw her blunder and tried to rectify it. “Or rather, yes, in a way it is my reason for wanting to speak to you----” “Because he’s coming?” “Because he’s not yet here.” “It’s about him, then?” He looked at her kindly, half-humourously, an almost fraternal wisdom in his smile. “About----? No, no: I meant that I wanted to speak today because it’s our last day alone together.” “Oh, I see.” He had slipped his hands into the pockets of his tweed shooting jacket and lounged along at her side, his eyes bent on the moist ruts of the drive, as though the matter had lost all interest for him. “Owen----” He stopped again and faced her. “Look here, my dear, it’s no sort of use.” “What’s no use?” “Anything on earth you can any of you say.” She challenged him: “Am I one of ‘any of you’?” He did not yield. “Well, then--anything on earth that even YOU can say.” “You don’t in the least know what I can say--or what I mean to.” “Don’t I, generally?” She gave him this point, but only to make another. “Yes; but this is particularly. I want to say...Owen, you’ve been admirable all through.” He broke into a laugh in which the odd elder-brotherly note was once more perceptible. “Admirable,” she emphasized. “And so has SHE.” “Oh, and so have you to HER!” His voice broke down to boyishness. “I’ve never lost sight of that for a minute. It’s been altogether easier for her, though,” he threw off presently. “On the whole, I suppose it has. Well----” she summed up with a laugh, “aren’t you all the better pleased to be told you’ve behaved as well as she?” “Oh, you know, I’ve not done it for you,” he tossed back at her, without the least note of hostility in the affected lightness of his tone. “Haven’t you, though, perhaps--the least bit? Because, after all, you knew I understood?” “You’ve been awfully kind about pretending to.” She laughed. “You don’t believe me? You must remember I had your grandmother to consider.” “Yes: and my father--and Effie, I suppose--and the outraged shades of Givre!” He paused, as if to lay more stress on the boyish sneer: “Do you likewise include the late Monsieur de Chantelle?” His step-mother did not appear to resent the thrust. She went on, in the same tone of affectionate persuasion: “Yes: I must have seemed to you too subject to Givre. Perhaps I have been. But you know that was not my real object in asking you to wait, to say nothing to your grandmother before her return.” He considered. “Your real object, of course, was to gain time.” “Yes--but for whom? Why not for YOU?” “For me?” He flushed up quickly. “You don’t mean----?” She laid her hand on his arm and looked gravely into his handsome eyes. “I mean that when your grandmother gets back from Ouchy I shall speak to her----” “You’ll speak to her...?” “Yes; if only you’ll promise to give me time----” “Time for her to send for Adelaide Painter?”