There was no particular interest to me in the expedition; indeed, had I been given my choice, I would much rather have stayed at home on the chance of getting a lesson in French from the Baron de Nesselrode—the public will see that I am frank in these records, even to detailing my errors of judgment—but consciousness that it was so, and that I showed weakness in encouraging it, urged me to the opposite course, and I agreed, with alacrity, to do all that they required of me. So in a few minutes we had started on our way. Sophy Markham clinging close, of course, to Charteris’s side, as Charlie Sandilands did to mine, and the rest walking, as Ange expressed it, _heegledy-peegledy_. How well I remember that morning: we were all so terribly young. Mrs. Carolus skipped round and about her Willy, whom, more than once, she nearly knocked over in her airy evolutions, as a bride of sixteen might have done; whilst Miss Markham hung upon Charteris’s arm and gazed up into his face with the rapture of a first attachment. The boys caught the youthful infection, and raced Tessie and me down the green slopes we had to traverse, until I told them they reminded me of Greenwich fair. Of all the company only two seemed unequal to taking part in the general hilarity. These two were Cave Charteris and _petite_ Ange. He walked along with his head in the air, without appearing to take much interest in the conversation of his self-elected companion. Did he or did he not care for the attentions which this woman was always pressing upon him? To love her I was quite sure would be impossible to him—the great difference in their ages alone would render it most unlikely—but he had certainly been more polite and amiable to her lately than he had ever been before. What motive could he have for it? for I was certain Cave Charter never did anything without a motive. Did he entertain any thoughts of marrying her? Miss Markham was reported at that time to have money, and Madame Marmoret had more than once openly expressed her disgust to see the lady’s favours transferred to the wrong quarter. But Mr. Charteris had told me he was rich; he could never be so mean as to sell his liberty to an old woman when he was not even in want of pecuniary assistance. Yet on what other grounds, except the desire to ingratiate himself with her, could one account for his former rudeness being changed to a curt familiarity? The other dullard of our party, dear Ange, was not so melancholy as she was silent. The burst of grief she had given way to, now more than a week ago, had been succeeded by an unusually subdued manner—an _older_ manner if I may express it so. It was as if the discovery of that day had swept her youth away before it. So I believed, at least, then—now I know that subtler influences were at work to destroy her gaiety.