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It was only half-past three when she started, and I she would be half an hour too early for Celia and Norah’s tea-party, but they would be glad to see her and there would be thus an opportunity to make some casual enquiry about Aunt Harriet. Clive and Hester were to come, and Captain Ingpen would surely be there: more surely because of this morning; his was the task of nonchalance and unawareness; all that was left him to do was to watch her and to hold his hand, hoping that by some stroke of fortune she would be baffled and perhaps satisfied. Her heart was sick and heavy in her side as she thought of him, and with him now came the thought of Jeremy and of the other little dog;—but the lassitude that had fallen upon her tumult was in itself a strength. What she needed was stillness and calm; and it gave her this. She could promise herself that even the sight of the three together, Hester, Ingpen and Clive,—would not make her quail, and as she stepped out into the sunlight, the heavy beating of her heart, the bright hot sun, brought back, by some odd trick of association, just such another day in London, twenty-five years ago, when she had set