felt the colour rise again hotly to her cheeks.

"Godfrey Radmore?" It was Miss Pendarth's turn to be genuinely surprised.
"_Godfrey Radmore!_ Then she's Australian? I thought there was something
odd about her."

Betty smiled, but she felt irritated. In some ways Miss Pendarth was
surely very narrow-minded!

"No, she's not Australian--at least I'm pretty sure she's not. They met
during the War, in Egypt. Her husband was quartered there at the same
time as Godfrey." She paused uncomfortably--somehow she found it very
difficult to go on and say what, after all, she had come here to say this
morning.

"I suppose," said Miss Pendarth at last, "that Godfrey Radmore is back
in Brisbane by now. One of the strange things about this war has been the
way in which those who could have been best spared, escaped."

In spite of herself, Betty smiled again. "Godfrey has come back to
England for good," she said quietly, "he's coming to-day for a long
week-end."

"D'you mean," asked Miss Pendarth, "that he's coming to stay with this
Mrs. Crofton at The Trellis House?"

"Oh, no!" exclaimed Betty. (What odd ideas Miss Pendarth sometimes had.)
"He's coming to Old Place of course: he telephoned to Janet from London,
and proposed himself."

"I think it's very good of you all to put up with him," said Miss
Pendarth drily, "I've never said so before, my dear, but I thought it
exceedingly ungrateful of him not to have come down here when he was in
England a year ago, I mean when he sent that puppy to your brother
Timmy."

Betty remained silent, and for once her old friend felt--what she too
seldom did feel--that she might just as well have kept her thoughts to
herself.

Miss Pendarth was really attached to Betty Tosswill, but she was one of
those people--there are many such--who find it all too easy to hurt those
they love.

They both got up.

"I'm afraid you think me very uncharitable," said the older woman
suddenly.

Betty looked at her rather straight. "I sometimes think it strange," she
said slowly, "that anyone as kind and clever as I know you are, does not
make more allowances for people. For my part, I wonder that Godfrey is
coming here at all. As I look back and remember all that happened--I
don't think that anyone at Old Place behaved either kindly or fairly to
him--I mean about our engagement."

Miss Pendarth was moved as well as surprised by Betty's quiet words. The
girl was extraordinarily reserved--she very rare