The crash of the prayer gong was the first thing that Francie heard next morning. She had not gone to sleep easily the night before. It had been so much pleasanter to lie awake, that she had done so till she had got past the stage when the process of going to sleep is voluntary, and she had nearly exhausted the pleasant aspect of things and got to their wrong side when the dawn stood at her window, a pallid reminder of the day that was before her, and she dropped into prosaic slumber. She came downstairs in a state of some anxiety as to whether the chill that she had perceived last night in Lady Dysart’s demeanour would be still apparent. Breakfast was nearly over when she got into the room, and when she said good morning to Lady Dysart, she felt, though she was not eminently perceptive of the shades in a well-bred manner, that she had not been restored to favour.

She sat down at the table, with the feeling that was very familiar to her of being in disgrace, combating with the excitement and hurry of her nerves in a way that made her feel almost hysterical; and the fear that the strong revealing light of the long windows opposite to which she was sitting would show the dew of tears in her eyes, made her bend her head over her plate and scarcely raise it to respond to Pamela’s good-natured efforts to put her at her ease. Miss Hope-Drummond presently looked up from her letters and took a quiet stare at the discomposed face opposite to her. She had no particular dislike for Francie beyond the ordinary rooted distrust which she felt as a matter of course for those whom she regarded as fellow-competitors, but on general principles she was pleased that discomfiture had come to Miss Fitzpatrick. It occurred to her that a deepening of the discomfiture would suit well with Lady Dysart’s present mood, and might also be to her own personal advantage.

“I hope your dress did not suffer last night, Miss Fitzpatrick? Mine was ruined, but that was because Mr. Dysart would make me climb on to the box for the last scene.”

“No, thank you, Miss Hope-Drummond—at least, it only got a little sign of dust.”

“Really? How nice! How lucky you were, weren’t you!”

“She may have been lucky about her dress,” interrupted Garry, “but I’m blowed if she could have seen much of the acting! Why on earth did you let Hawkins jam you into that old brougham, Miss Fitzpatrick?”

“Garry,” said Lady Dysart with unusual asperity, “how often am I to tell you not to speak of grown-up gentlemen as if they were little boys like yourself? Run off to your lessons. If you have finished, Miss Fitzpatrick,” she continued, her voice chilling again, “I think we will go into the drawing-room.”

It is scarcely to be wondered at that Francie found the atmosphere of the drawing-room rather oppressive. She was exceedingly afraid of her hostess; her sense of her misdoings was, like a dog’s, entirely shaped upon other people’s opinions, and depended in no way upon her own conscience; and she had now awakened to a belief that she had transgressed very badly indeed. “And if she” (“she” was Lady Dysart, and for the moment Francie’s standard of morality) “was so angry about me sitting in the brougham with him,” she thought to herself, as, having escaped from the house, she wandered alone under the oaks of the shady back avenue, “what would she think if she knew the whole story?”

In Francie’s society “the whole story” would have been listened to with extreme leniency, if not admiration; in fact, some episodes of a similar kind had before now been confided by our young lady to Miss Fanny Hemphill, and had even given her a certain standing in the eyes of that arbiter of manners and morals. But on this, as on a previous occasion, she did not feel disposed to take Miss Hemphill into her confidence. For one thing, she was less distinct in her recollection of what had happened than was usual. It had seemed to her that she had lost her wonted clear and mocking remembrance of events from the moment when he had taken her hand, and what followed was blurred in her memory as a landscape is blurred by the quiver of heat in the air. For another, she felt it all to be so improbable, so uncertain, that she could not quite believe in it herself. Hawkins was so radically different from any other man she had ever known; so much more splendid in all ways, the very texture of his clothes, the scent on his handkerchief, breathed to her his high estate. That she should have any part in this greatness was still a little beyond belief, and as she walked softly in the deep grass under the trees, she kept saying to herself that he could not really care for her, that it was too good to be true.

It was almost pathetic that this girl, with her wild-rose freshness and vivid spring-like youth, should be humble enough to think that she was not worthy of Mr. Hawkins, and sophisticated enough to take his love-making as a matter of common occurrence, that in no way involved anything more serious. Whatever he might think about it, however, she was certain that he would come here to-day, and being wholly without the power of self-analysis, she passed easily from such speculations to the simpler mental exercise of counting how many hours would have to crawl by before she could see him again. She had left the avenue, and she strolled aimlessly across a wide marshy place between the woods and the lake, that had once been covered by the water, but was now so far reclaimed that sedgy grass and bog-myrtle grew all over it, and creamy meadow-sweet and magenta loose-strife glorified the swampy patches and the edges of the drains. The pale azure of the lake lay on her right hand, with, in the distance, two or three white sails just tilted enough by the breeze to make them look like acute accents, gaily emphasising the purpose of the lake and giving it its final expression. In front of her spread a long, low wood, temptingly cool and green, with a gate pillared by tall fir-trees, from which, as she lifted the latch, a bevy of wood-pigeons dashed out startling her with the sudden frantic clapping of their wings. It was a curious wood—very old, judging by its scattered knots of hoary, weather-twisted pine-trees; very young, judging by the growth of ash saplings and slender larches that made dense every inch of space except where rides had been cut through them for the woodcock shooting. Francie walked along the quiet path, thinking little of the beauty that surrounded her, but unconsciously absorbing its rich harmonious stillness. The little grey rabbits did not hear her coming, and hopped languidly across the path, “for all the world like toys from Robinson’s,” thought Francie; the honeysuckle hung in delicious tangle from tree to tree; the wood-pigeons crooned shrilly in the fir-trees, and every now and then a bumble-bee started from a clover blossom in the grass with a deep resentful note, as when one plucks the lowest string of a violoncello. She had noticed a triple wheel-track over the moss and primrose leaves of the path, and vaguely wondered what had brought it there; but at a turn where the path took a long bend to the lake she was no longer left in doubt. Drawn up under a solemn pine-tree near the water’s edge was Sir Benjamin’s bath-chair, and in it the dreaded Sir Benjamin himself, vociferating at the top of his cracked old voice, and shaking his oaken staff at some person or persons not apparent.

Francie’s first instinct was flight, but before she had time to turn, her host had seen her, and changing his tone of fury to one of hideous affability he called to her to come and speak to him. Francie was too uncertain as to the exact extent of his intellect to risk disobedience, and she advanced tremblingly.

“Come here, Miss,” said Sir Benjamin, goggling at her through his gold spectacles. “You’re the pretty little visitor, and I promised I’d take you out driving in my carriage and pair. Come here and shake hands with me Miss. Where’s your manners?”

This invitation was emphasised by a thump of his stick on the floor of the chair, and Francie, with an almost prayerful glance round for James Canavan, was reluctantly preparing to comply with it, when she heard Garry’s voice calling her.

“Miss Fitzpatrick! Hi! Come here!”

Miss Fitzpatrick took one look at the tremulous, irritable old claw outstretched for her acceptance, and plunged incontinently down a ride in the direction of the voice. In front of her stood a sombre ring of immense pine-trees, and in their shadow stood Garry and James Canavan, apparently in committee upon some small object that lay on the thick mat of moss and pine-needles.

“I heard the governor talking to you,” said Garry with a grin of intelligence, “and I thought you’d sooner come and look at the rat that’s just come out of this hole. Stinking Jemima’s been in there for the last half hour after rabbits. She’s my ferret, you know, a regular ripper,” he went on in excited narration, “and I expect she’s got the muzzle off and is having a high old time. She’s just bolted this brute.”

The brute in question was a young rat that lay panting on its side, unable to move, with blood streaming from its face.

“Oh! the creature!” exclaimed Francie with compassionate disgust; “what’ll you do with it?”

“I’ll take it home and try and tame it,” replied Garry; “it’s quite young enough. Isn’t it, Canavan?”

James Canavan, funereal in his black coat and rusty tall hat, was regarding the rat meditatively, and at the question he picked up Garry’s stick and balanced it in his hand.

he said pompously, and immediately brought the stick down on the rat’s head with a determination that effectually disposed of all plans for its future, educational or otherwise.

Garry and Francie cried out together, but James Canavan turned his back unregardingly upon them and his victim, and stalked back to Sir Benjamin, whose imprecations, since Francie’s escape, had been pleasantly audible.

“The old beast!” said Garry, looking resentfully after his late ally; “you never know what he’ll do next. I believe if mother hadn’t been there last night, he’d have gone on jumping on Kitty Gascogne till he killed her. By the bye, Miss Fitzpatrick, Hawkins passed up the lake just now, and he shouted out to me to say that he’d be at the turf-boat pier at four o’clock, and he hoped none of you were going out.”

Then he had not forgotten her; he was going to keep his word, thought Francie, with a leap of the heart, but further thoughts were cut short by the sudden appearance of Pamela, Christopher, and Miss Hope-Drummond at the end of the ride. The treacherous slaughter of the rat was immediately recounted to Pamela at full length by Garry, and Miss Fitzpatrick addressed herself to Christopher.

“How sweet your woods are, Mr. Dysart,” she began, feeling that some speech of the kind was suitable to the occasion. “I declare, I’d never be tired walking in them!”

Christopher was standing a little behind the others, looking cool and lank in his flannels, and feeling a good deal less interested in things in general than he appeared. He had an agreeably craven habit of simulating enjoyment in the society of whoever fate threw him in contact with, not so much from a wish to please as from a politeness that had in it an unworthy fear of exciting displeasure; and so ably had he played the part expected of him that Miss Hope-Drummond had felt, as she strolled with him and his sister through the sunshiny wood, that he really was far more interested in her than she had given him credit for, and that if that goose Pamela were not so officious in always pursuing them about everywhere, they would have got on better still. She did not trouble her brothers in this way, and the idea that Mr. Dysart would not have come at all without his sister did not occur to her. She was, therefore, by no means pleased when she heard him suggest to Miss Fitzpatrick that she should come and see the view from the point, and saw them walk away in that direction without any reference to the rest of the party.

Christopher himself could hardly have explained why he did it. It is possible that he felt Francie’s ingenuous, unaffected vulgarity to be refreshing after the conversation in which Miss Hope-Drummond’s own especial tastes and opinions had shed their philosophy upon a rechauffÉ of the society papers, and recollections of Ascot and Hurlingham. Perhaps also, after his discovery that Francie had a soul to be saved, he resented the absolute possession that Hawkins had taken of her the night before. Hawkins was a good little chap, but not the sort of person to develop a nascent intellectuality, thought this sage of seven-and-twenty.

“Why did you come out here by yourself?” he said to her, some little time after they had left the others.

“And why shouldn’t I?” answered Francie, with the pertness that seldom failed her, even when, as on this morning, she felt a little uninterested in every subject except one.

“Because it gave us the trouble of coming out to look for you.”

“To see I didn’t get into mischief, I suppose!”

“That hadn’t occurred to me. Do you always get into mischief when you go out by yourself?”

“I would if I thought you were coming out to stop me!”

“But why should I want to stop you?” asked Christopher, aware that this class of conversation was of a very undeveloping character, but feeling unable to better it.

“Oh, I don’t know; I think everyone’s always wanting to stop me,” replied Francie with a cheerful laugh; “I declare I think it’s impossible for me to do anything right.”

“Well, you don’t seem to mind it very much,” said Christopher, the thought of how like she was to a typical “June” in a Christmas Number striking him for the second time; “but perhaps that’s because you’re used to it.”

“Oh, then, I can tell you I am used to it, but, indeed, I don’t like it any better for that.”

There was a pause after this. They scrambled over the sharp loose rocks, and between the stunted fir-trees of the lake shore, until they gained a comparatively level tongue of sandy gravel, on which the sinuous line of dead rushes showed how high the fretful waves had thrust themselves in winter. A glistening bay intervened between this point and the promontory of Bruff, a bay dotted with the humped backs of the rocks in the summer shallows, and striped with dark green beds of rushes, among which the bald coots dodged in and out with shrill metallic chirpings. Outside Bruff Point the lake spread broad and mild, turned to a translucent lavender grey by an idly-drifting cloud; the slow curve of the shore was followed by the woods, till the hay fields of Lismoyle showed faintly beyond them, and, further on, the rival towers of church and chapel gave a finish to the landscape that not even conventionality could deprive of charm. Christopher knew every detail of it by heart. He had often solaced himself with it when, as now, he had led forth visitors to see the view, and had discerned their boredom with a keenness that was the next thing to sympathy; he had lain there on quiet Autumn evenings, and tried to put into fitting words the rapture and the despair of the sunset, and had gone home wondering if his emotions were not mere self-conscious platitudes, rather more futile and contemptible than the unambitious adjectives, or even the honest want of interest, of the average sight-seer. He waited rather curiously to see whether Miss Fitzpatrick’s problematic soul would here utter itself. From his position a little behind her he could observe her without seeming to do so; she was looking down the lake with a more serious expression than he had yet seen on her face, and when she turned suddenly towards him, there was a wistfulness in her eyes that startled him.

“Mr. Dysart,” she began, rather more shyly than usual; “d’ye know whose is that boat with the little sail, going away down the lake now?”

Christopher’s mood received an unpleasant jar.

“That’s Mr. Hawkins’ punt,” he replied shortly.

“Yes, I thought it was,” said Francie, too much preoccupied to notice the flatness of her companion’s tone.

There was another pause, and then she spoke again.

“Mr. Dysart, d’ye think—would you mind telling me, was Lady Dysart mad with me last night?” She blushed as she looked at him, and Christopher was much provoked to feel that he also became red.

“Last night?” he echoed in a tone of as lively perplexity as he could manage; “what do you mean? Why should my mother be angry with you?” In his heart he knew well that Lady Dysart had been, as Francie expressed it, “mad.”

“I know she was angry,” pursued Francie. “I saw the look she gave me when I was getting out of the brougham, and then this morning she was angry too. I didn’t think it was any harm to sit in the brougham.”

“No more it is. I’ve often seen her do it herself.”

“Ah! Mr. Dysart, I didn’t think you’d make fun of me,” she said with an accent on the “you” that was flattering, but did not altogether please Christopher. “You know,” she went on, “I’ve never stayed in a house like this before. I mean—you’re all so different—”

“I think you must explain that remarkable statement,” said Christopher, becoming Johnsonian as was his wont when he found himself in a difficulty. “It seems to me we’re even depressingly like ordinary human beings.”

“You’re different to me,” said Francie in a low voice, “and you know it well.”

The tears came to her eyes, and Christopher, who could not know that this generality covered an aching thought of Hawkins, was smitten with horrified self-questioning as to whether anything he had said or done could have wounded this girl, who was so much more observant and sensitive than he could have believed.

“I can’t let you say things like that,” he said clumsily. “If we are different from you, it is so much the worse for us.”

“You’re trying to pay me a compliment now to get out of it,” said Francie, recovering herself; “isn’t that just like a man?”

She felt, however, that she had given him pain, and the knowledge seemed to bring him more within her comprehension.