"Feeling better?" he said.
She did not answer him. "What made you come in like that?" she asked.
He replied to the question with absolute simplicity. "I've just brought Gracie home again. She asked me to tea in the schoolroom, but you weren't there, and they said I should find you here, so I came to fetch you."
He moved slowly across and stood before her, looking down into her tired eyes with an odd species of relentlessness in his own.
"It's an infernal shame that you should work so hard!" he said, with sudden resentment. "You're looking fagged to death."
Avery smiled a little. "I like hard work," she said.
"Not such as this!" said Piers. "It isn't fit for you. Why can't the lazy hound do it himself?"
Her smile passed. "Hush, Piers!" she said. "Not here!"
He glanced towards the altar, and she thought a shade of reverence came into his face for a moment. But he turned to her again immediately with his flashing, boyish smile.
"Well, it isn't good for you to overwork, you know, Avery. I hate to think of it. And you have no one to take care of you and see you don't."