Johnny Bennett, walking toward Mrs. Newbolt's, was also thinking, in his calm way, of just what he had said there by Maurice's fireside. "Of course he doesn't see why she hasn't fallen in love with anybody else. Any decent fellow would be stupid about that sort of thing. But it's been that way ever since she was a child. And I've loved her ever since then, too. All the same, I'll only sign up for a year. Then I'll make another stab at it ..." When he rang Mrs. Newbolt's doorbell, and was told that Eleanor had not been there, he was perplexed. "I must have misunderstood Maurice," he thought. CHAPTER XXXI Eleanor had no intention of going to Mrs. Newbolt's. "She'd talk Edith to me!" she said to herself; "I _can't_ understand why she likes her!" Instead of dining with her aunt, she meant to walk about the streets until she was sure that Maurice had started for the train; then she would go back to her own house. So she wandered down the avenue until, tired of looking with unseeing eyes into shop windows, it occurred to her to go into the park; there, on a bench on one of the unfrequented paths, she sat down, hoping that no one would recognize her; it was cold, and she shivered and looked at her watch. Only six o'clock! It would be two hours before Maurice would leave the house for the station. It seemed absurd to be here in the dampness of the March evening; but she couldn't go home and get into any discussion with him; she might burst out again about Edith!--which always made him angry. She wished that she had not told him that Edith was in love with him. "It ought to disgust him, but it might flatter him!" And she oughtn't to have said that other thing; she oughtn't to have accused him of caring for Edith. "Of course he doesn't. And it was a horrid thing to say. I was angry, because I was jealous; but it wasn't true. I wish I hadn't said it. I'll write to him, and ask him to forgive me." But the other thing _was_ true: "I saw it in her eyes! She loves him. But I oughtn't to have put the idea into his head!" The more she thought of what she had put into Maurice's head, the more uneasy she became. Oh, if she only had Jacky! Then, Edith could be as brazen as she pleased, and Maurice would never notice her! "Of course he doesn't love her; I'm certain of _that_!" she said again and again,--and all her schemes, wise and foolish, for getting possession of the boy, began to crowd into her mind. Then an idea came to her which fairly took her breath away! A perfectly wild idea, which she dared not stop to analyze: suppose, instead of sitting here in the cold, she should go, now, boldly, to Lily, and ask for Jacky? "I believe _I_ could persuade her to give him to us! She wouldn't do it for Maurice, but she might for me!"