in the warm sunlight.

"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.