We were both so evidently anxious to have nothing more said about the companions of our pilgrimage, that we talked on every subject but that of our evening stroll, and left the gentlemen to amuse each other in the rear whilst we scuttled home together arm-in-arm, like two rabbits that had taken fright and were hurrying back to the warren. But after I had retired to rest that night, I could not help thinking of dear little Ange, and wondering how she came to choose Mr. Charteris for her cavalier. I supposed it was very natural she should do so. I had left him smoking sulkily under the garden wall, and when she came out for her evening stroll, he had probably proffered the same request to her that he did to me, and she could hardly have refused him. What nonsense it was to think twice about such a trifle! Yet I did think of it, many more times than twice. Ange was too good and pious to derive any harm from ordinary intercourse with Cave Charteris, whose opinions on most subjects would be more calculated, I thought, to shock than to charm her; but she was very young and unsophisticated, and her father was far too careless of her. Yet what business was it of mine? The fear of being thought meddlesome has more than once deterred me from doing what I considered right in life. It deterred me now. [Illustration: [Fleuron]] CHAPTER V THE BLACK CLOUD. I find I have arrived at an epoch in my story—an epoch from which I can date a remarkable change in the character of my surroundings—I seemed to have got on the black books of the entire household. In the first place, Mr. Lovett had scarcely spoken to me since the day that I had extracted the twenty-five francs from him wherewith to pay my debt to Mrs. Carolus. Whether he considered my subsequent silence dangerous, or read a determination in my eye which did not accord with his own intentions, I know not; but he assumed a great distance towards me, and never addressed me except it were absolutely necessary. He did not parade his altered feelings before the others, but, all the same, they were evident enough to me. The studied politeness of his manner and the increased blandness of his tone, when we met in public, would have betrayed the truth of themselves to my understanding, had not the ominous silence that reigned between us, whenever we found ourselves alone together, made it still more patent. My guardian’s suspicions or distrust, however, did not seriously affect me. I had a rod in pickle for the old gentleman, and thought it just as well he should be a little prepared for what was coming. But I did think it hard that Tessie should avoid me.