made no mention of the fact that he
carried the D.S.O. and the Croix de Guerre in his bag. He had met the
Hosacks at the American Embassy in London in 1913. He was rather sweet
on Primrose.

The fact that Joan was still there was easily accounted for. She liked
the place, and her other invitations were not interesting. Hosack
didn't want her to go either, but of course that had nothing to do with
it, and so far as Mrs. Hosack was concerned, let the bedroom be
occupied by some one of her set and she was happy enough. Indeed, it
saved her the brain fag of inviting some one else, "always difficult
with so many large houses to fill and so few people to go round, my
dear."

Harry Oldershaw was such a nice boy that he did just as he liked. If it
suited him he could keep his room until the end of the season. The case
of Gilbert Palgrave was entirely different. A privileged, spoiled
person, who made no effort to be generally agreeable and play up, he
was rather by way of falling into the same somewhat difficult category
as a minor member of the British Royalty. His presence was an honor
although his absence would have been a relief. He chose to prolong his
visit indefinitely and there was an end of it.

Every day at Easthampton had, however, been a nightmare to Palgrave.
Refusing to take him seriously, Joan had played with him as a cat plays
with a mouse. Kind to him one minute she had snubbed him the next. The
very instant that he had congratulated himself on making headway his
hopes had been scattered to the four winds by some scathing remarks and
her disappearance for hours with Harry Oldershaw. She had taken a
mischievous delight in leading him on with winning smiles and charming
and appealing ways only to burst out laughing at his blazing
protestations of love and leave him inarticulate with anger and wounded
vanity. "If you want me to love you, make me," she had said. "I shall
fight against it tooth and nail, but I give you leave to do your best."
He had done his best. With a totally uncharacteristic humbleness,
forgetting the whole record of his former easy conquests, and with this
young slim thing so painfully in his blood that there were times when
he had the greatest difficulty to retain his self-control, he had
concentrated upon the challenge that she had flung at him and set
himself to teach her how to love with all the thirsty eagerness of a
man searching for water. People who had watched him in his too wealthy