less cold, a little less stately, Con."

"Perhaps it is shyness. Remember, we are strangers to her; she was not
cold and stately to me, Johnny."

"Ah!" Johnny said, and went on staring straight ahead down the road.

"Did Helen say much to you, Con?"

"Oh, a good deal!"

"About"--Johnny hesitated--"her?"

"Yes, a little; she thinks a great deal of her. She says that at first
Joan seemed to hold her at arm's length. Now they understand one another
better, and she says Joan has the best heart in the world."

"Yet she seems cold to me," said Johnny with a sigh.

Still, in spite of Joan's coldness, he found his way over to Starden
very often during the days that followed. He had picked up a small
secondhand car, which he strenuously learned to drive, and thereafter
the little car might have been seen plugging almost daily along the six
odd miles of road that separated Buddesby from Starden.

And each time he got the car out a pair of black eyes watched him with
smouldering anger and passion and jealousy. A pair of small hands were
clenched tightly, a girl's heart was aching and throbbing with love and
hate and undisciplined passions, as though it must break.