voice had suddenly popped up in her head. She had been thinking about him more than about any one else that evening and that easily accounted for the matter. Fancy had mimicked him—yet why did Fancy use her name and clothe it in Pinckney’s voice?—and it was distinctly a call, the call of a person who wishes to draw another person’s attention.

Pinckney had never called her by her name and she felt almost irritated at the impertinence of the phantom voice in doing so.

This same irritation made her laugh when she realised it. Then the idea that Byrne might lock the hall door before she could get back drove every other thought away and she began to run, her shadow running before her over the moonlit grass.

Half way across the sward, which was divided from the grass land proper by a Ha-ha, she heard the stable clock striking eleven.

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CHAPTER IV

When Phyl withdrew from the dining-room, Hennessey filled his glass with port, Pinckney, who took no wine, lit a cigarette and the two men drew miles closer to one another in conversation.

They were both relieved by the withdrawal of the girl, Hennessey because he wanted to talk business, Pinckney because her presence had affected him like a wet blanket.

His first impression of Phyl had been delightful, then, little by little, her stiffness and seeming lifelessness had communicated themselves to him. It seemed to him that he had never met a duller or more awkward schoolgirl. His mind was of that quick order which requires to be caught in the uptake rapidly in order to shine. Slowness, coldness, dulness or hesitancy in others depressed him just as dull weather depressed him. He did not at all know with what a burning interest his arrival had been awaited, or the effect that his voice had produced and his first appearance. He did not know how the dull schoolgirl had weighed him in a mysterious balance which she herself did not quite comprehend and had found him slightly wanting. Neither could he tell the extent of the paralyses produced in that same mind of hers by the cracked china, the old dish cover, 32 Byrne’s awkwardness, and the deboshed crumb-brush.

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He should have kept to his first impression of her, for first impressions are nearly always right; he should have sought for the reason of so much charm proving 

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