“You remember that you are coming up to the Castle this afternoon?” he said, at length.

“To the Castle!” she answered.  “No, I have heard nothing of it.”

“Did not your sister tell you she made an engagement for herself and you a week or more ago?  You are to bring the little girl; she wants to see the view from the top of the tower.”

Then Beatrice remembered.  Elizabeth had told her, and she had thought it best to accept the situation.  The whole thing had gone out of her mind.

“Oh, I beg your pardon!  I do remember now, but I have made another plan—­how stupid of me!”

“You had forgotten,” he said in his heavy voice; “it is easy for you to forget what I have been looking forward to for a whole week.  What is your plan—­to go out walking with Mr. Bingham, I suppose?”

“Yes,” answered Beatrice, “to go out with Mr. Bingham.”

“Ah! you go out with Mr. Bingham every day now.”

“And what if I do?” said Beatrice quickly; “surely, Mr. Davies, I have a right to go out with whom I like?”

“Yes, of course; but the engagement to come to the Castle was made first; are you not going to keep it?”

“Of course I am going to keep it; I always keep my engagements when I have any.”

“Very well, then; I shall expect you at three o’clock.”

Beatrice went on home in a curiously irritated condition of mind.  She did not, naturally, want to go to the Castle, and she did want to go out with Geoffrey.  However, there was no help for it.

When she came in to dinner she found that Geoffrey was not there.  He had, it seemed, gone to lunch with Dr. Chambers, whom he had met on the beach.  Before he returned they were all three starting for the Castle, Beatrice leaving a message to this effect with Betty.

About a quarter of an hour afterwards, Geoffrey came back to fetch his gun and Beatrice, but Beatrice was gone, and all that he could extract from Betty was that she had gone to see Mr. Davies.

He was perfectly furious, though all the while he knew how unreasonable was his anger.  He had been looking forward to the expedition, and this sudden change of plan was too much for his temper.  Off he started, however, to pass a thoroughly miserable afternoon.  He seemed to miss Beatrice more each step and gradually to grow more and more angry at what he called her “rudeness.”  Of course it never occurred to him that what he was really angry at was her going to see Mr. Davies, or that, in truth, her society had become so delightful to him that to be deprived of it even for an afternoon was to be wretched.  To top everything, he only got three good shots that afternoon, and he missed them all, which made him crosser than ever.

As for Beatrice, she enjoyed herself just as little at the Castle as Geoffrey did on the beach.  Owen Davies took them through the great unused rooms and showed them the pictures, but she had seen them before, and though some of them were very fine, did not care to look at them again—­at any rate, not that afternoon.  But Elizabeth gazed at them with eager eyes and mentally appraised their value, wondering if they would ever be hers.