"You need not have been so anxious to spare me. Harry is coming here this afternoon."
She saw the incredulity flicker in Hillyard's eyes, but she did not mind.
"Yes," she asserted. "He goes down this evening to a camp in the New Forest where his battalion is waiting to go to France. He starts at six from Waterloo. He promised to run in here first."
Hillyard looked at the clock. It was already half-past four. He had not the faintest hope that Luttrell would come. Stella had no doubt pressed him to come. She had probably been a little importunate. Luttrell's promise was an excuse, just an excuse to be rid of her—nothing more.
"Luttrell has probably a great deal to do on this last afternoon," he suggested.
"Of course, he won't be able to stay long," Stella Croyle agreed. "Still, five minutes are worth a good deal, aren't they, if you have waited for them two years?"
She was impenetrable in her confidence. It clothed her about like armour. Not for a moment would she doubt—she dared not! Harry was coming back to the house that afternoon. Would he break something—some little china ornament upon the mantel-shelf? He generally knocked over something. What would it be to-day, the mandarin with the nodding head, or the funny little pot-bellied dwarf which she had picked up at Christie's the day before? Stella smiled delightedly as she selected this and that of her little treasures for destruction. Oh, to-day Harry Luttrell could sweep every glass or porcelain trinket she possessed into the grate—when once he had passed through the doorway—when once again he stood within her room. She sat with folded hands, hope like a rose in her heart, sure of him, so sure of him that she did not even watch the hands of her clock.
But the hands moved on.
"I will stay, if I may," said Hillyard uncomfortably. "I will go, of course, when——" and he could not bring himself to complete the sentence.
Stella, however, added the words, though in a quieter voice and with less triumph than she had used before.