The letter which the joint wits of Judy and Ginger concocted that afternoon went northwards, and reached its destination next morning. It told Bertie merely the fact that on the day on which Amelie had lunched with her father she had been to see Mrs. Emsworth afterwards, and suggested that it would be worth while finding out, if possible, what took place there. Of late the estrangement between him and Amelie, though it had in no ways healed, had been, since they were staying in other houses, where there was less opportunity for intimacy and thus less sense of its absence, less intolerably and constantly present to his consciousness. Every now and then, as on the occasion when she told him that they were going to bore for coal, there had been bitter and stinging moments, but such were rare, and their intercourse, which was rare also, was distinguished by cool if not frigid courtesy.
On this particular morning they were leaving the house they had been staying in near Inverness, and were coming South again to visit other friends in the North of England. It was perfectly natural, therefore, that Bertie should travel some part of the way, at any rate, in a smoking-carriage, but, the train being an express, he never omitted to visit her carriage when it stopped, and inquired whether she wanted anything. Once she was thirsty, and he got her some lemonade from the refreshment-room, bought her papers, and opened for her a window which was stiff to move. These little attentions were accepted by her with the same courtesy as that with which they were offered, and he would stand on the platform chatting to her through the window, or seating himself for a few minutes in her carriage, till it was time for him to go back to his own. They lunched together in her carriage, and it was at her suggestion that at the next stopping-place he went back to the other to smoke after lunch. It was then that he opened the letters which had reached him that morning, having in
