"No; Lady Ascott said nothing about your being here when she came to the concert."
"And perhaps you wouldn't have come if you had known I was here?"
"Is that why you didn't come to the concert?"
"Well, Evelyn, I suppose it was. You'll forgive me the trickery, won't you?" She took his hand and held it for a moment. "That touch of your hand means more to me than anything in the world." A cloud came into her face which he saw and it pained him to see it. "Lady Ascott wrote saying she intended to ask you to Thornton Grange, so I wrote at once asking her if she could put me up; she guessed an estrangement, and being a kind woman, was anxious to put it right."
"An estrangement, Owen? But there is no estrangement between us?"
"No estrangement?"
"Well, no, Owen, not what I should call an estrangement."
"But you sent me away, saying I shouldn't see you for three months.
Now three months have passed—haven't I been obedient?"
"Have three months passed?"
"Yes; It was in August you sent me away and now we are in November."