“I wish I could be there to hear the conversation,” said Pamela.  “Jock with his company manners is a joy.”

An hour later Lewis Elliot accompanied Pamela back to Hillview.

“It’s rather absurd,” he protested.  “I’m afraid I’m inflicting myself on you, but if you will give me half an hour I shall be grateful.”

“You must tell me about Biddy,” Pamela said, as she sat down in her favourite chair.  “Draw up that basket chair, won’t you? and be comfortable.  You look as if you were just going to dart away again.  Did Biddy say anything in particular?”

“He told me to come and see you....  I won’t take a chair, thanks.  I would rather stand. ....Pamela, I know it’s the most frightful cheek, but I’ve cared for you exactly twenty-five years.  You never had a notion of it, I know, and of course I never said anything, for to think of your marrying a penniless, dreamy sort of idiot was absurd—­you who might have married anybody!  I couldn’t stay near you loving you as I did, so I went right out of your life.  I don’t suppose you ever noticed I had gone, you had always so many round you waiting for a smile....  I used to read the lists of engagements in the Times, dreading to see your name.  No, that’s not the right word, because I loved you well enough to wish happiness for you whoever brought it.  I sometimes heard of you from one and another, and I never forgot—­never for a day.  Then my uncle died and my cousin was killed, and I came back to Priorsford and settled down at Laverlaw, and was content and quite fairly happy.  The War came, and of course I offered my services.  I wasn’t much use but, thank goodness, I got out to France, and got some fighting—­a second-lieutenant at forty!  It was the first time I had ever felt myself of some real use....  Then that finished and I was back at Laverlaw among my sheep—­and you came to Priorsford The moment I saw you I knew that my love for you was as strong and young as it was twenty years ago....”

Pamela sat fingering a fan she had taken up to protect her face from the blaze and looking into the fire.

“Pamela.  Have you nothing to say to me?”

“Twenty-five years is a long time,” Pamela said slowly.  “I was fifteen then and you were twenty.  Twenty years ago I was twenty and you were twenty-five—­why didn’t you speak then, Lewis?  You went away and I thought you didn’t care.  Does a man never think how awful it is for a woman who has to wait without speaking?  You thought you were noble to go away....  I suppose it must have been for some wise reason that the good God made men blind, but it’s hard on the women.  You might at least have given me the chance to say No.”

“I was a coward.  But it was unbelievable that you could care.  You never showed me by word or look.”