’Well, one or two of her old ways may be left in her still, and it is not a bad thought.  Then you will walk the rest of the distance if you don’t meet Mr. Julian?  I must be in London by the evening.’

’Any time to-night will do for me.  I shall not begin work until to-morrow, so that the four o’clock train will answer my purpose.’

Thus they parted, and Sol strolled leisurely back.  The road was quite deserted, and he lingered by the park fence.

‘Sol!’ said a bird-like voice; ‘how did you come here?’

He looked up, and saw a figure peering down upon him from the top of the park wall, the ground on the inside being higher than the road.  The speaker was to the expected Ethelberta what the moon is to the sun, a star to the moon.  It was Picotee.

‘Hullo, Picotee!’ said Sol.

‘There’s a little gate a quarter of a mile further on,’ said Picotee.  ’We can meet there without your passing through the big lodge.  I’ll be there as soon as you.’

Sol ascended the hill, passed through the second gate, and turned back again, when he met Picotee coming forward under the trees.  They walked together in this secluded spot.

‘Berta says she wants to see you and father,’ said Picotee breathlessly.  ’You must come in and make yourselves comfortable.  She had no idea you were here so secretly, and she didn’t know what to do.’

‘Father’s gone,’ said Sol.

’How vexed she will be!  She thinks there is something the matter—­that you are angry with her for not telling you earlier.  But you will come in, Sol?’

‘No, I can’t come in,’ said her brother.

’Why not?  It is such a big house, you can’t think.  You need not come near the front apartments, if you think we shall be ashamed of you in your working clothes.  How came you not to dress up a bit, Sol?  Still, Berta won’t mind it much.  She says Lord Mountclere must take her as she is, or he is kindly welcome to leave her.’

’Ah, well!  I might have had a word or two to say about that, but the time has gone by for it, worse luck.  Perhaps it is best that I have said nothing, and she has had her way.  No, I shan’t come in, Picotee.  Father is gone, and I am going too.’

‘O Sol!’

’We are rather put out at her acting like this—­father and I and all of us.  She might have let us know about it beforehand, even if she is a lady and we what we always was.  It wouldn’t have let her down so terrible much to write a line.  She might have learnt something that would have led her to take a different step.’

’But you will see poor Berta?  She has done no harm.  She was going to write long letters to all of you to-day, explaining her wedding, and how she is going to help us all on in the world.’

Sol paused irresolutely.  ‘No, I won’t come in,’ he said.  ’It would disgrace her, for one thing, dressed as I be; more than that, I don’t want to come in.  But I should like to see her, if she would like to see me; and I’ll go up there to that little fir plantation, and walk up and down behind it for exactly half-an-hour.  She can come out to me there.’  Sol had pointed as he spoke to a knot of young trees that hooded a knoll a little way off.