Joan blushed, overcome with confusion, and remained depressed until
Errington, on the point of leaving, reassured her good-humouredly.

"Don't brood over your father's unkind references to two-edged
compliments, Miss Stair. I entirely decline to see any but one meaning
to your speech--and that a very pleasant one."

He shook hands with the Rector and Diana, holding the latter's hand an
instant longer than was absolutely necessary, to ask, rather low:--

"Is it peace, then?"

But the softening spell of the music was broken, and Diana felt her
resentment against him rise up anew.

Silently she withdrew her hand, refusing him an answer, defying him with
a courage born of the near neighbourhood of the Rector and Joan, and a
few minutes later the hum of his motor could be heard as it sped away
down the drive.

Diana lay long awake that night, her thoughts centred round the man who
had come so strangely into her life. It was as though he had been forced
thither by a resistless fate which there was no eluding--for, on his own
confession, he had deliberately sought to avoid meeting her again.

His whole attitude was utterly incomprehensible--a study of violently
opposing contrasts. Diana felt bruised and shaken by the fierce
contradictions of his moods, the temperamental heat and ice which he had
meted out to her. It seemed as if he were fighting against the
attraction she had for him, prepared to contest every inch of