“Joan, you are not cold.  You can’t be cold,” Johnny said.

She laughed.  “No, I was only thinking of the past.  There is much in the past to make one shiver, I think, and oh, Johnny, I was thinking of you too!”

“Of me?”

She nodded.  “Helen was telling me how keen and eager you were about your farm, how difficult it was to get you to leave it for an hour.”  She paused.  “That—­that was before you came here, the first time—­and since then you have been here almost every day.  Johnny, aren’t you wasting your time?” She looked at him with sweet seriousness.

“I am wasting my time, Joan, when—­when I am not with you!” he said, and his voice shook with sudden feeling, and into his face there came a wave of colour.  “To be near you, to see you—­” He paused.

Down the garden pathway came a trim maidservant, who could never guess how John Everard hated her for at least one moment of her life.

“A gentleman in the drawing-room, miss, to see you,” the girl said.

“A gentleman to see me?  Who?”

“He would not give a name, miss.  He said you might not recognise it.  He wishes to see you on business.”  Joan frowned.  Who could it be?  Yet it was someone waiting, someone here.

“I shall not be long,” she said to Johnny, and perhaps was glad of the excuse to leave him.

“I will wait till you come back, Joan.”

She smiled and nodded, and hastened to the house and the drawing-room, and, opening the door, went in to find herself face to face with Philip Slotman.

* * * * *

Philip Slotman, of all living people!  She stared at him in amaze, almost doubting the evidence of her sight.  What did he here?  How dared he come here and thrust himself on her notice?  How dared he send that lying message by the maid, that she might not recognise his name?

“You’ve got a nice place here, Joan,” he said with easy familiarity.  “Things have looked up a bit for you, eh?  I notice you haven’t said you are glad to see me.  Aren’t you going to shake hands?”

“Explain,” she said quietly, “what you mean by coming here.”

If she had given way to senseless rage, and had demanded how he dared—­and so forth, he would have smiled with amusement; but the cool deliberation of her, the quiet scorn in her eyes, the lack of passion, made him nervous and a little uncomfortable.

“I came here to see you—­what else, Joan?”

“Uninvited,” she said.  “You have taken a liberty—­”

“Oh, you!” he shouted suddenly.  “You’re a fine one to ride the high horse with me!  Who the dickens are you to give yourself airs?  You can stow that, do you hear?” His eyes flashed unpleasantly.  “You can stow that kind of talk with me!”

“You came here believing, I suppose, that I was practically friendless.  You knew that I had no relatives, especially men relatives, so you thought you would come to continue your annoyance of me.  Would you mind coming here?”