“Ah, that’s more than I can tell you. All the information I can give you is that he is very, _very_ good-looking, that he met her to-day in the park, and walked a little way with her as she came back from the town, and that she looked very much confused when she met me in the garden, and would have liked, I’m sure, to think I hadn’t seen her.” Now there was a little mischief in this speech, for Lilith did not think Chris had behaved quite well in pretending not to know whom she meant when she described the stranger present at the _tableaux_. But, to do her justice, she had not the least intention of rousing the real anger she instantly saw in Mr. Bradfield’s face. Not only in his face either, for Lilith felt, when his hand next touched hers in the dance, that he was trembling with rage. “Oh, ho!” said he, with an exclamation which was meant to sound like a laugh, but which was, in truth, anything but mirthful; “so she meets a sweetheart on the quiet, does she?” Lilith, rather frightened, and seeing that she had made more serious mischief than she had intended hastened to answer: “Oh, no, no; I didn’t mean that. I daresay it was only an accidental meeting. I--I----” Mr. Bradfield interrupted her sternly. “Have you ever seen him before, this fellow whom she met?” “Only once,” answered Lilith, quickly. “Where was that? Was she with him?” “N--no, she wasn’t with him. It was the day of the _tableaux_. He was sitting on one of the back seats, and nobody seemed to know who he was. Not even Chris, for I asked her.” Mr. Bradfield was evidently much puzzled. All the golden youth of Wyngham and the neighbourhood were dancing in his drawing-rooms that night, and who the fortunate young man could be who was considered good-looking by such a connoisseur as Lilith, and whom Chris condescended to meet on the sly, he had not the remotest notion. Certainly a man’s ideas of another man’s good looks differed considerably from those of a girl; but he could not, running over in his mind the eligible young men of the neighbourhood, conceive that any one of them should find favour in the very particular eyes of both the beauties. With his usual directness, he set about solving the mystery at once. Taking Lilith back to her mother as soon as the dance was over, he went in search of Chris, whom he found sitting in the dining-room, eating an ice, and looking bored by young Cullingworth’s conversation. “Miss Christina, I want to speak to you,” said he, shortly. Chris, upon whom a hazy dread began to fall, as to the subject upon which he wished to interrogate her, followed him with reluctance into the embrasure of the window, which had been kept free from refreshment tables on purpose for _tête-à-têtes_ of a more or less interesting sort. CHAPTER XIX. MR. BRADFIELD RECEIVES A SHOCK.