"Is Mr. Clinton quite well?" she asked, preparing to move away.
"Well, ma'am, I don't think he is quite well. We've all noticed it. Or it seems more as if he was worried about something. But he's not eating well, ma'am, and not sleeping well."
"Poor father!" said Joan, standing by her mother. "We've been too long away from him. We'll cheer him up, and soon put him right, mother."
Mrs. Clinton went to bed at half-past ten, as usual. The Squire came home at eleven o'clock. It was the hour when he expected her to have her light out, if he should come up then.
He went straight to her room. It was in darkness. "Well, Nina," he said from the door, "you're back safely. Sorry I had to be out when you arrived. I'll come to you in a few minutes."
He went along to his dressing-room. Just outside it, in the broad carpeted corridor was Joan. She was in a white dressing-gown, her hair in a thick plait down her back. She looked hardly older than the child she had been five years before.
"Father dear!" she said. "How naughty of you to be away when we came home! Have you heard about it?"
Her beautiful eyes, swimming with tender happiness, looked up into his. She had come close for his embrace.
"My dear child!" he said, kissing her. "My little Joan!"
"I thought you'd be glad," she said, nestling to him. "I'm so frightfully happy, father."