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Grace straightened angrily and her eyes flashed.

“I won’t have it!” she cried. “What right has anyone to talk of him? Is it anyone’s business but ours?”

“Somebody remarked that all the world loves a lover, my dear, but that’s only true of the lover who runs off the rails,” returned Miss Whipple, shaking her white head wisely. “Ordinarily, the world envies a lover, but sneers at him for a fool. You must expect the world to show its love for you by pitying you both.”

Grace turned away, dabbing her cheeks as she peered uncertainly into the brilliant sunshine.

“You think he—he will change his mind?” she asked.

“The most comforting thing in a home is the fire which burns on the hearth,” answered Miss Whipple gently. “A man merely gets a lot of excitement out of a fire which starts in somebody else’s bedroom. When that goes out, he shivers to death; unless his own hearth fire———”

“His own hearth-fire must go out if it is too long neglected.”

“Then he must re-kindle it—if he can. But James Harley’s hearth-fire hasn’t gone out, and very soon he will realise how lucky he is in that respect.”

Grace shook her head sadly, as though she doubted.

There was a pause in the conversation, during which Grace gazed out to sea, her thoughts upon the home she had left, perhaps for ever. Her eyes were dry now, but her breath still caught in her throat occasionally—faint echoes of her sobs. Miss Whipple stood beside her, meditatively fingering her old-fashioned jade necklace and sighing enviously at intervals. Joan whispered to her doll childishly.

“What would you advise me to do?” asked Grace at last.

“I?” exclaimed Miss Whipple, smiling. “Why, my dear, I’ve never been married.”