"Not really?" said Piers. "Well, perhaps when you are a little older your imagination will develop. In the meantime, if you are a wise little girl, you will run back to bed and leave your elders to settle their own affairs."
Olive drew herself up with dignity. "It is not my intention to go so long as you are in the house," she said with great distinctness.
"Indeed!" said Piers. "And why not?"
He spoke with the utmost quietness, but Avery caught the faintest tremor in his voice that warned her that Olive was treading dangerous ground.
She hastened to intervene. "But of course you are going now," she said to him. "It is bedtime for us all. Good-night! And thank you for walking home with me!"
Her own tone was perfectly normal. She turned to him with outstretched hand, but he put it gently aside.
"One minute!" he said. "I should like an answer to my question first. Why are you so determined to see me out of the house?"
He looked straight at Olive as he spoke, no longer careless of mien, but implacable as granite.
Olive, however, was wholly undismayed. She was the only one of the Vicar's children who had never had cause to feel a twinge of fear. "You had better ask yourself that question," she said, in her cool young treble. "You probably know the answer better than I do."
Piers' expression changed. For a single instant he looked furious, but he mastered himself almost immediately. "It's a lucky thing for you that you are not my little girl," he observed grimly. "If you were, you should have the slapping of your life to-night. As it is,—well, you have asked me for an explanation of my presence here, and you shall have one. I am here in the capacity of escort to Mrs. Denys. Have you any fault to find with that?"