“You have had a talk with Beatrice, Mr. Davies?”

“Yes,” he answered apathetically.

Elizabeth paused.  Then she took her bull by the horns.

“Are you going to marry Beatrice, Mr. Davies?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he answered slowly and without surprise.  It seemed natural to him that his own central thought should be present in her mind.  “I love her dearly, and want to marry her.”

“She refused you, then?”

“Yes.”

Elizabeth breathed more freely.

“But I can ask her again.”

Elizabeth frowned.  What could this mean?  It was not an absolute refusal.  Beatrice was playing some game of her own.

“Why did she put you off so, Mr. Davies?  Do not think me inquisitive.  I only ask because I may be able to help you.”

“I know; you are very kind.  Help me and I shall always be grateful to you.  I do not know—­I almost think that there must be somebody else, only I don’t know who it can be.”

“Ah!” said Elizabeth, who had been gazing intently at the little holes in the beach which she had now cleared of the sand.  “Of course that is possible.  She is a curious girl, Beatrice is.  What are those letters, Mr. Davies?”

He looked at them idly.  “Something your sister was writing while I talked to her.  I remember seeing her do it.”

“G E O F F R E—­why, it must be meant for Geoffrey.  Yes, of course it is possible that there is somebody else, Mr. Davies.  Geoffrey!—­how curious!”

“Why is it curious, Miss Granger?  Who is Geoffrey?”

Elizabeth laughed a disagreeable little laugh that somehow attracted Owen’s attention more than her words.

“How should I know?  It must be some friend of Beatrice’s, and one of whom she is thinking a great deal, or she would not write his name unconsciously.  The only Geoffrey that I know is Mr. Geoffrey Bingham, the barrister, who is staying at the Vicarage, and whose life Beatrice saved.”  She paused to watch her companion’s face, and saw a new idea creep across its stolidity.  “But of course,” she went on, “it cannot be Mr. Bingham that she was thinking of, because you see he is married.”

“Married?” he said, “yes, but he’s a man for all that, and a very handsome one.”

“Yes, I should call him handsome—­a fine man,” Elizabeth answered critically; “but, as Beatrice said the other day, the great charm about him is his talk and power of mind.  He is a very remarkable man, and the world will hear of him before he has done.  But, however, all this is neither here nor there.  Beatrice is a curious woman, and has strange ideas, but I am sure that she would never carry on with a married man.”

“But he might carry on with her, Miss Elizabeth.”