He thought of writing her a short note asking her to be in when he called, but the post from Jarvis Hall did not go out till after twelve; he could get to London quicker himself. After breakfast he told Mabel that he found he had to go away for the day. "Something you have forgotten--couldn't you write for it, Dick?" she asked. "It seems such a shame, because we shall only have one more day of you." "No," he answered; he did not lift his eyes to look at her. "As a matter of fact it is somebody that I must see." He had not written about or mentioned Joan since he had gone away from Sevenoaks last; Mabel had hoped the episode was forgotten. It came to her suddenly that it was Joan he was speaking of, and she remembered Fanny's long, breathless explanation and the girl's rather pathetic belief that she would do something to help. She could not, however, say anything to him before the others. "Will the eleven-thirty do for you?" Tom was asking. "Because I have got to take the car in then." "It seems a little unreasonable, Dick," Mrs. Grant put in. She had not been the best of friends with him since their violent scene together; her voice took on a querulous tone when she spoke to him. "Who can there be in London, that you suddenly find you must see?" She, too, for the moment, was thinking of the outrageous girl. "I am sorry," Dick answered. "It is my own fault for not having gone before. I'll try and get back to-morrow." Mabel caught him afterwards alone on his way out to the garden to smoke a pipe. She slipped a hand through his arm and went with him. "Mother is upset," she confided. "I don't think she can be awfully well; just lately she cries very easily." "She always used to"--Dick's voice was not very sympathetic. "Do you remember how angry I was at the way she cried when father died?" "Yes," Mabel nodded. "All the same, she does love you, Dick; it is a funny sort of love, perhaps, but as she gets older it seems to me that she gets softer, less selfish. And, Dick, I think she feels--as indeed I do, too--that you have grown away from us. It is not the War, though that takes men from us women, too; it is more just as if we were out of sympathy with one another. Are we?" "What a funny thought." Dick smiled down at her. "There has never been, as you know, much sympathy between mother and myself. But for you, Mabel, things will always be the same between us. I trust you with everything I have." "And yet you aren't quite trusting me now," she answered. "You are going up to London to see this girl, aren't you, Dick?--and all this time you have never written or spoken to me about her."