“Five o’clock.  You’ll have to stop a night in Guernsey, which is a nuisance.”

Charles Svendt shook his head in dumb misery.  It was crushing to be so far away—­thirty hours at least, and he gnashing within to be on the spot and at work, learning the worst, seeing what could be done.

Then, with a preliminary knock on the door, Mrs. Carre came in with brilliant lobsters and crisp lettuces for lunch, and, hungry as they all were, their souls loathed the thought of eating.

“They are just out of the pot,” beamed she, “and the lettuces were growing not five min’ts ago.  Ech!”—­at sight of Pixley—­“is he ill?”

“Mr. Pixley has just had bad news from home, Mrs. Carre,” said Graeme.  “He will have to go by to-day’s boat.”

“Ach, but I am sorry!  And him so happy yesterday and dancing the best in the room,” and her pleasant face clouded sympathetically.

“Meg, I’ll go up to your room for a minute and finish my hair,” said Hennie Penny.  “I ran out just as I was—­”

“It was very kind of you,” said Charles Svendt, and the general sympathy seemed to comfort him somewhat.

“No good feeling too bad about it, old man, till you know all the facts,” said Graeme, when the girls had gone off upstairs.

“It hits me, Graeme.  Not financially, as I said.  But in every other way it hits me hard.—­Have you reached the point of seeing that it may hit her too?”—­and he nodded towards upstairs.

“I suppose there was a glimmering idea of the chance of that at the back of my head somewhere, but we won’t trouble about it just now.  How about your mother?”

Pixley shook his head dismally again.  “It will be a terrible blow to her.  He was a bit hard and cold at home, you know, but she looked up to him as immaculate.  Yes, it will hit her very hard.  As to money, of course, she will be all right.  I have plenty.  But the talk and the scandal—­” and he groaned again at thought of it all.

“Send her over here for a time—­or bring her yourself.  We have heaps of room here.  Miss Penny is coming to stop with us next week.  Your mother was always fond of Margaret, I believe.”

“She was—­very fond of her....  That’s a good thought of yours, Graeme.  Are you sure Margaret—?”

“Of course she would.  She and Miss Penny will just take care of her, and no word of the troubles will reach her.  That’s the thing to do, and maybe you’ll find things not as bad as you expect when you get back.”

But, from the look of him, Charles Svendt had small hope of matters being anything but what he feared.

When the girls came down they made an apology of a meal, for, in spite of their hunger, the stricken look of their friend took their appetites away.

The thought that there might still lurk in their minds a suspicion that he had had some knowledge of his father’s position, when he came across to stop their marriage, still troubled him.