but
otherwise showing no sign of emotion.

Jimmy filled his pipe whilst he went down the front steps, and as he
rammed the tobacco into the bowl he noticed, with a cynical little
smile, that his hand was perfectly steady. In his heart he did not
believe that the quarrel would prove final, that she would break off the
engagement on the grounds of his past failings. It was just a passing
cloud, he told himself. Both of them would have been more upset had
their love affair come to a sudden and abrupt close. He remembered how
he had felt when he had parted from Lalage, the fever and the agony of
it, the sense of utter desolation and hopelessness. And from that he
came to think of Lalage herself. She had never turned on him because he
drank. Far otherwise. The knowledge had made her more tender, more
watchful over his comfort, more anxious to shield him from worries which
might drive him into the power of his enemy. She had never blamed him,
even by implication. And why? He knew the answer only too well. Because
she had loved him. Now the fever, which the parting from Vera had failed
to arouse, came on him again. His pipe went out, and, unconsciously, he
quickened his steps, as was his way when deeply stirred.

Lalage loved him. Lalage loved him too well to turn on him. The words
drummed through his brain with maddening persistency; and then, as a
corollary to them, came the questions, "Did Vera love him well enough to
take the risk, to give him a chance to run straight? Was he always to be
the Black Sheep, and herd with others of his kind?"

CHAPTER XXX

It was only a couple of hours after Jimmy had left Vera that the
chauffeur from Drylands brought him a note in Mrs. Grimmer's sprawling
handwriting.

"It will be all right," Ethel wrote. "Vera has agreed to take the
sensible view, and let you show outward and visible signs of reformation
during your engagement. So you must be very good, and, if you can, even
pious. Come up to lunch to-morrow with a jaunty air as though nothing
had happened."

Jimmy heaved a sigh of relief as he folded up the note and thrust it
into his pocket. So the crisis was safely over, after all. Straightway
he began to make excuses for Vera, her youth, her inexperience, the
atmosphere in which she had been reared; yet he could not help
remembering that Lalage was younger, by a year at least, and that her
chances of gaining experience at home had been far smaller, and still
Lalage had