d so incongruously with the
rest of her personality.

"Do you think she--cared, then?" asked Gillian.

"For Quarrington? Of course I do. Oh, well it will all come right in
the end, I hope. And, anyway"--with a wicked little grin--"Davilof won't
have quite such a clear coast as he anticipated."

"But if Michael Quarrington is married--"

"He isn't," interrupted Lady Arabella briskly. "It was contradicted in
the papers the very next morning. Only I suppose Davilof hustled off to
Devonshire in such a hurry that he never saw it.

"Contradicted? But how did such a mistake arise?"

"Oh, whoever supplied that particular tidbit of news got the
names mixed. It ought really to have been _Warrington_, not
Quarrington--Mortrake Warrington, the sculptor, you know. It seems he
and Michael were both using the same woman as a model--only Warrington
married her! Spoiled Michael's picture--or his temper--when he ran off
with her for a honeymoon, I expect!"

On her return to Friars' Holm Gillian hastened to retail for Magda's
benefit the information she had acquired from Lady Arabella, and was
rewarded by the immediate change in her which became apparent. The
haunted, feverish look in her eyes was replaced by a more tranquil
shining, the intense restlessness she had evinced of late seemed to fall
away from her, and she ceased to pepper her conversation with the bitter
speeches which had worried Gillian more than a little, recognising in
them, as she did, the outcrop of some inward and spiritual turmoil.

To Magda, the fact that Michael was not married, after all, seemed to
re-create the whole world. It left hope still at the bottom of the box
of life's possibilities. Looking backward, she realised now how strongly
she had clung to the belief that some day he would come back to her. It
had been the one gleam of light through all those dark months which had
followed his abrupt departure; and the intolerable pain of the hours
that had succeeded Davilof's announcement of his marriage to the Spanish
woman had taught her how much Michael meant to her.

She was beginning to appreciate, too, the tangle of convictions and
emotions which had driven him from her side. His original attitude
toward her, based on the treatment she had accorded to his friend who
had loved her, had been one of plain censure and distrust, strengthened
and intensified by that strong "partisan" feeling of one man for
another--fruit of the ineradicable sex antagoni