“That’s right, Agatha,” said Jane maliciously.  “Don’t let anyone speak ill of him.”

“I am not speaking ill of him,” said Sir Charles, before Agatha could retort.  “It is a mere matter of feeling, and I should not have mentioned it had I known the altered relations between him and Miss Wylie.”

“Pray don’t speak of them,” said Agatha.  “I have a mind to run away by the next train.”

Sir Charles, to change the subject, suggested a duet.

Meanwhile Erskine, returning through the village from his morning ride, had met Trefusis, and attempted to pass him with a nod.  But Trefusis called to him to stop, and he dismounted reluctantly.

“Just a word to say that I am going to be married,” said Trefusis.

“To—?” Erskine could not add Gertrude’s name.

“To one of our friends at the Beeches.  Guess to which.”

“To Miss Lindsay, I presume.”

“What in the fiend’s name has put it into all your heads that Miss
Lindsay and I are particularly attached to one another?” exclaimed
Trefusis.  “You have always appeared to me to be the man for Miss
Lindsay.  I am going to marry Miss Wylie.”

“Really!” exclaimed Erskine, with a sensation of suddenly thawing after a bitter frost.

“Of course.  And now, Erskine, you have the advantage of being a poor man.  Do not let that splendid girl marry for money.  If you go further you are likely to fare worse; and so is she.”  Then he nodded and walked away, leaving the other staring after him.

“If he has jilted her, he is a scoundrel,” said Erskine.  “I am sorry I didn’t tell him so.”

He mounted and rode slowly along the Riverside Road, partly suspecting Trefusis of some mystification, but inclining to believe in him, and, in any case, to take his advice as to Gertrude.  The conversation he had overheard in the avenue still perplexed him.  He could not reconcile it with Trefusis’s profession of disinterestedness towards her.

His bicycle carried him noiselessly on its india-rubber tires to the place by which the hemlock grew and there he saw Gertrude sitting on the low earthen wall that separated the field from the road.  Her straw bag, with her scissors in it, lay beside her.  Her fingers were interlaced, and her hands rested, palms downwards, on her knee.  Her expression was rather vacant, and so little suggestive of any serious emotion that Erskine laughed as he alighted close to her.

“Are you tired?” he said.

“No,” she replied, not startled, and smiling mechanically—­an unusual condescension on her part.

“Indulging in a day-dream?”

“No.”  She moved a little to one side and concealed the basket with her dress.

He began to fear that something was wrong.  “Is it possible that you have ventured among those poisonous plants again?” he said.  “Are you ill?”

“Not at all,” she replied, rousing herself a little.  “Your solicitude is quite thrown away.  I am perfectly well.”