Mrs. Cricklander, he found, had not returned from Paris, whither she
always went several times a year for her clothes.

But they had written to one another once or twice.

He had promised in the last letter that he would go down to Wendover
again for Whitsuntide, and this time he firmly determined nothing should
keep him from his obvious and delectable fate.

Mrs. Cricklander had no haunting fears now. She could discover no reason
for John Derringham's change towards her. Arabella had been mute and had
put it down to the stress of his life. This tension with the foreign
State, it leaked out, had been known to the Ministers for a week before
it had been made public--that, of course, was the cause of his
preoccupation, and she would simply order some especially irresistible
garments in Paris, and bide her time.

He wrote the most charming letters, though they were hardly long enough
to be called anything but notes; but there was always the insinuation in
them that she was the one person in the world who understood him, and
they were expressed with his usual cultivated taste.

It was sheer force of will that kept John Derringham from ever thinking
of Halcyone. He resolutely crushed the thought of her every time it
presented itself, and systematically turned to his work and plunged into
it, if even a mental vision of her came to his mind's eye.

He felt quite calm and safe when, two days before he was expected at
Wendover, the idea came to him to propose himself to the Professor, so
as not to have to go and see him and endure his cynical reflections