"Well," observed Everard, with a questioning smile, "have you talked Mollie into a fever?"
"I am afraid we did talk rather too much," returned Waveney, penitently, "for Mollie looked very tired when I left. But, father, how weak and thin she is! I could not help fretting when I saw her. But she looks sweeter than ever, dear thing, and Miss Althea's blue dressing-gown is lovely! She was quite a picture with that Indian silk rug over her feet, and all those beautiful flowers beside her."
"Ingram again," returned Everard, with a groan. "Do you know, he is actually going to Eastbourne next week to take lodgings for her and Nurse Helena, and nothing I can say will stop him."
"Mollie says I am to go, too," observed Waveney, anxiously.
"Yes, dear, Miss Harford proposed that, and I think she is right in saying that you need a change, too; you are looking thin and pale, my child."
"Oh, I am very well," she replied, hastily; and then Ann, the heavy-footed, came up to tell them that dinner was ready. After that, as Waveney was too restless to stay in the house, they went out for a walk, and strolled in Old Ranelagh gardens, and then down the lime walk and along the embankment to Cheyne Walk; and then, as it was growing dusk, they walked on quickly to Sloane Square, and Everard put her in the train.
"Good-bye until Sunday, father, dear," were her last words, as the train moved off. But that night, before Waveney fell asleep happily in her Pansy Room, Nurse Helena's homely words recurred to her.
"Well, we are none of us angels, but it is my belief that our Heavenly Father will not be angry with us for loving those He has given us to love."
"Thank God for that," she murmured, "and that it is no sin that I love my Mollie so intensely." And in the dying firelight Waveney folded her little hands together, and with a grateful heart said her Te Deum.