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been longing to do ever
since Toni had dealt her that blow. "He will be interested to hear of my
meeting with Mr. Lowell."
    To her mother, and even to Aunt Ellen, this seemed
a perfectly normal procedure. So Beverley spent an hour putting everything in
order for her first day's work on the morrow, washing a pair of white gloves, tacking
a fresh collar on to her dark. Working dress and so on. And then, telling her
mother that she would be back in good time for supper, she went off down the
village street towards Geoffrey's cottage.
    She had very little idea, even now, what she was going
to say to him. And certainly she had no intention whatever of asking any
leading questions, or in any way showing that she knew of a connection be tween him and Sara Wayne. But surely, in
the natural course of her account of the day, he would say something which
would give her a hint of his real position in this story.
    After her talk with Franklin Lowell, and the
carelessly reassuring things he had said about Toni's lively imagination, she
was inclined to take a much more hopeful view of things. She imagined his
saying casually,
    "Oh, I know Sara Wayne quite well. I painted
her portrait. Lovely girl she is, too. I'd have fallen in love with her myself,
if I could have allowed myself the luxury. But, as it is, she's marrying a very
nice chap who can well-afford to give her the setting she needs."
    Oh, if only he would say just that! And in a tone that
meant he didn't care about her at all, except as a pretty girl whom he
naturally admired.
    But, even if he did say that, or something like it,
would she entirely believe him? Or would she wonder if he were putting up an
elaborate smokescreen, so that she should have no inkling of what was really in
his mind and heart?
    To imagine that it could have come to that! Her even
supposing for one moment that there should be a barrier of deception between
her and Geoffrey. She told herself that she should be ashamed to be think ing such a thing, on the strength of no more solid evidence than the chatter of a highly imaginative child.
    And, a good deal cheered by her own vehemence, she
turned in at the gate of Geoffrey's cottage. But this time too there was no
answer to her knock. And, although she thought it doubtful that he would still be working in his studio at the end of the
garden, she went round the house and along the rather untidy path which
led to the small converted barn used by Geoffrey as a studio. As she did so, the
most extraordinary sense of misgiving assailed her. It was nothing to do with
anything she saw or heard or could in any way account for. Only, as she neared
the studio, it seemed to her that her heart sank unaccountably, and she even
found that she was trembling.
    She paused for a moment by the big old rambler which
sprawled in picturesque untidiness over an arch way half-way down the path. And,
as she did so, the door of the studio opened suddenly, - as though someone on
the other side of it had wrenched it open.
    For a second a girl stood silhouetted in the door-way.
Then she banged the door behind her and came running up the path. There was no
time to conceal oneself. Hardly even time to step aside out of her immediate
path. In a matter of moments the girl had cleared the distance between them, and,
with a great gasp, came to a stop only a yard or two from Beverley.
    Beverley caught her breath in a gasp too. For the girl
who had run from Geoffrey's studio in such agitation, and now stood staring at
her utterly nonplussed, was Sara Wayne.

CHAPTER THREE
    "WHATEVER made me think she was listless or indifferent?"
was Beverley's first reflection, as she looked back at the lovely, flushed and
quivering features of the eldest Wayne girl. And then, "What on earth am I
going to say to her?"
    It seemed to her that there was at least a whole minute's
silence between them. But of course there was nothing of the sort. A minute is
a long time, measured out in embarrassed seconds. And there is