“It’s rather difficult for me to talk to you, because I can never tell whether you are serious or only laughing at me. Don’t you rather--rather _puzzle_ Mrs. Bonnington?” “Well, I am afraid I rather--rather shock her too.” “We must all seem, down here, very antediluvian to you. There is only one person about here you can speak to in your own way.” “Mrs. Dale?” To Mabin’s fanciful and rather jealous eyes it seemed that Rudolph’s color grew a little deeper as he uttered the name. “Yes.” “Ah! You will have an opportunity of learning the art, if you are going to stay with her.” “But it is an art which will be entirely useless when I get back here again. Papa and mamma would think it rather shocking. Do you know, if they knew how lively Mrs. Dale is in her ordinary talk they wouldn’t let me go to her?” “Then I shouldn’t tell them, if I were you. You will find a use for the art of conversation some day, you know, when you come across other frivolous and good-for-nothing young persons, like Mrs. Dale and me.” Mabin would rather he had not coupled his name with that of the lovely widow. “Were Mr. and Mrs. Bonnington interested to hear you had been to see her?” asked Mabin, feeling as she spoke that this was another indiscretion. But Rudolph began to laugh mischievously. “They would have been extremely ‘interested,’ I am sure, if they had heard of it,” said he. “But I have too much consideration for my parents to impart to them any information which would ‘interest’ them too deeply to be good for their digestions. I suppose you think that shocking, don’t you?” But Mabin was cautious. There was more than one gulf, she felt, between her and the merry young sailor, and she was not going to make them any wider. “I’m sure you do what is best,” she said modestly. “I’ve got something to tell you,” said he. “But it’s rather a confidential communication, and these lilac bushes extend a long way. Will you come nearer to the wall? Or may I get over it?” “You may get over if you like,” said Mabin, coming as she spoke a little nearer to the bushes. Rudolph availed himself of the permission in the twinkling of an eye, and stood beside her on the grass path under the limes, looking down at the pretty nape of the girlish neck, which showed between the soft brown hair and the plain, wide turn-down collar of pale blue linen which she wore with her fresh Holland frock. “The man--I told you about the man I saw watching ‘The Towers,’ well, he has disappeared,” said Rudolph, not sorry to have an excuse for whispering into such a pretty little pink ear. “Oh! I am glad!” “So I hope we shall see no more of him.” “And do you still think--surely you can’t still think--that he was watching Mrs. Dale?” “Oh, well, don’t _know_, of course. And at any rate the slight objection I had to your going to ‘The Towers’ has disappeared.”