“Oh, yes, I am sure,” said Lucy.  “Do you know what my old nurse used to tell me when I was a child?” she asked, lifting her face to his.  “She said I had the Indian sight, because I could see so far and so distinctly.  Some of the Indians have the gift greatly, you know.  I am quite certain that I saw the object—­and it looked like the figure of a man—­go swiftly away from the tree across the grass.  I could not see him to the end of the lawn, but he must have gone into the plantation.  I dare say he saw you coming towards him.”

Lionel smiled.  “I wish I had caught the spy.  He should have answered to me for being there.  Do you like verbena, Lucy?”

He laid the verbena and geranium on her lap, and she took them up mechanically.

“I do not like spies,” she said, in a dreamy tone.  “In India they have been known to watch the inmates of a house in the evening, and to bow-string one of those they were watching before the morning.  You are laughing!  Indeed, my nurse used to tell me tales of it.”

“We have no spies in England—­in that sense, Lucy.  When I used the word spy, it was with no meaning attached to it.  It is not impossible but it may be a sweetheart of one of the maid-servants, come up from Deerham for a rendezvous.  Be under no apprehension.”

At that moment, the voice of his wife came ringing through the room.  “Mr. Verner!”

He turned to the call.  Waiting to say another word to Lucy, as a thought struck him.  “You would prefer not to remain at the window, perhaps.  Let me take you to a more sheltered seat.”

“Oh, no, thank you,” she answered impulsively.  “I like being at the window.  It is not of myself that I am thinking.”  And Lionel moved away.

“Is it not true that the fountains at Versailles played expressly for me?” eagerly asked Sibylla, as he approached her.  “Sir Rufus won’t believe that they did.  The first time we were in Paris, you know.”

Sir Rufus Hautley was by her side then.  He looked at Lionel.  “They never play for private individuals, Mr. Verner.  At least, if they do, things have changed.”

“My wife thought they did,” returned Lionel, with a smile.  “It was all the same.”

“They did, Lionel, you know they did,” vehemently asserted Sibylla.  “De Coigny told me so; and he held authority in the Government.”

“I know that De Coigny told you so, and that you believed him,” answered Lionel, still smiling.  “I did not believe him.”

Sibylla turned her head away petulantly from her husband.  “You are saying it to annoy me.  I’ll never appeal to you again.  Sir Rufus, they did play expressly for me.”

“It may be bad taste, but I’d rather see the waterworks at St. Cloud than at Versailles,” observed a Mr. Gordon, some acquaintance that they had picked up in town, and to whom it had been Sibylla’s pleasure to give an invitation.  “Cannonby wrote me word last week from Paris——­”