As I mooted the question, I thought of Miss Markham. I knew how silly and romantic she was, delighting in moonlight walks and secret assignations, and could imagine how she had waylaid Cave Charteris smoking under the garden wall, and dragged him out into the fields, with his will or against it. A man can hardly refuse a woman’s request point blank to her face. Silly creature that she was! How could she possibly remain so blind to the fact that her attentions were not agreeable to him! As I meditated somewhat in this strain, we came right upon the opposition couple before they were aware of our propinquity, and I almost ran into Mr. Charteris’s arms. ‘Here is an encounter!’ I said merrily. The woman by his side lifted her head, and, to my utter astonishment, I saw the beautiful face of Angela Lovett. ‘_Ange!_’ I exclaimed, ‘what are you doing here—where is Tessie? Why didn’t she come with you?’ There was such a ring of wonder and, I suppose, dissatisfaction in my voice, that Mr. Charteris at once took up the cudgels in defence of his fair companion. ‘I think we shall be justified in putting the same question, Miss Marsh. What are _you_ doing here, walking alone with Monsieur de Nesselrode?’ ‘Oh! _our rencontre_ was a mere accident,’ I replied, with vexation. ‘I was on the Piron road when I met a horrid animal, half wolf and half dog, and I thought it was a real wolf and was terribly frightened, and the Baron happened to meet me, and so——’ ‘Oh! did you see one of those savage-looking sheep-dogs, Hilda dear!’ exclaimed Ange, who appeared as ready as myself to drop the subject of the company she had been detected in keeping. ‘I do not wonder it alarmed you. I was very nearly bitten by one once. It flew out of a cottage and attacked me. Papa was so frightened, he wanted to have it killed; but it wasn’t mad, you know. The village children had been teasing it, and it took fright at a stick I carried in my hand. But I am surprised you have not seen one before. There are so many about St. Pucelle.’ She had left Mr. Charteris’s side and linked her arm in mine, and she leaned on me with a confiding pressure which seemed to say, ‘Don’t tell of me.’ I didn’t quite like it, and yet it would have been hard to say why I was annoyed, for Ange ran about St. Pucelle as she listed, and gave account of her proceedings to no one. ‘Where is Tessie?’ I reiterated, looking down into the soft violet eyes that were raised so confidingly to mine. ‘At home, dear, reading to papa. It was so hot indoors, I thought I should prefer the fields.’ ‘Did you come this way to meet me?’ ‘No! I didn’t know where you were. Tessie thought you had gone to see Mrs. Carolus. It is more than two hours since you left home.’ I started guiltily. Put upon my oath to guess the time of my absence, I should really have thought it had been about thirty or forty minutes. ‘Let us go back as fast as we can then, Ange, or they will begin to think we have eloped altogether.’