o smile. "To tell the truth, Betty, I've had
rather a shock. You heard the telephone bell ring?"

"You mean some minutes ago?"

"Yes."

"Who was it?"

"Godfrey Radmore, speaking from London."

"Is that all? I was afraid that something had happened to Timmy!" But,
even so, the colour flamed up into Betty Tosswill's face.

Her step-mother looked away out of the window as she went on:--"It was
stupid of me to have been so surprised, but somehow I thought he was
still in Australia."

"He was in England last year." Betty, not really knowing what she was
doing, bent over the peccant milkman's book.

"He's coming down here on Friday. I think he realises that I haven't
forgiven him for not coming to see us last year. Still we must let
bygones be bygones."

Then she wondered with a sharp touch of self-reproach what had made her
say such a stupid thing--a thing which might have, and indeed had, two
such different meanings? What she had _meant_ had been that she must
forget the hurt surprise she and her husband had felt that Godfrey
Radmore, on two separate occasions, had deliberately avoided coming down
from London to what had been, after all, so long his home; in fact, as he
himself had said just now, the only home he had ever known.

But what was this Betty was saying?--her face rather drawn and white, all
the bright colour drifted out of it--"Of course we must, Janet! Besides
Godfrey was not to blame--not at the last."

Janet knew what Betty meant. That at the end it was she who had failed
him. But when their engagement had been broken off, Godfrey had been
worse than penniless--in debt, and entirely through his own fault. He
had gambled away what little money he had, and it had ended in his going
off to Australia--alone.

Then an astounding thing had happened. Godfrey had had a fortune left him
by an eccentric old man in whose employment he had been as secretary for
a while. His luck still holding, he had gone through most of the war,
including Gallipoli, with only one wound, which had left no ill effects.
A man so fortunate ought not to have neglected his old friends.

Janet Tosswill, the step-mother completely merging into the friend, came
forward, and put her arms round the girl's shoulders. "Look here, Betty.
Wouldn't you rather go away? I don't suppose he'll stay longer than
Monday or Tuesday--"

"I shouldn't think of going away! I expect he's forgotten all about that
old affair. It's a long time ago, J