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 _after_ he should be engaged to his hostess.
Mr.Carlyon had wired back, "Come if you like," and on this evening in early June John Derringham arrived at the orchard house.
Cheiron made no allusion to the matter that had caused them to part with some breezy words upon his old pupil's side.

Mrs.Cricklander or Wendover might not have existed; their talk was upon philosophy and politics, and contained not the shadow of a woman--even Halcyone was not mentioned at all.
Whitsuntide fell late that year, at the end of the first week in June, and the spring having been exceptionally mild, the foliage was all in full beauty of the freshest green.
It was astonishingly hot, and every divine scent of the night came to John Derringham as he went out into the garden before going to bed.