Fernande, who had been silently watching him from behind the bunch of bluebells, saw the scowl which gradually gathered on his brow and chased away that strange rapt look and the sunny smile, which she had noted with such satisfaction every time that she contrived to catch a glimpse of his face. Her womanly instinct had been so unerring up to now, the success of her undertaking so assured, that she had no mind to mar it by a false move in the end. "_Mon cousin_," she said suddenly, just as de Maurel, avoiding the main village street, had struck through an orchard and along a by-path, which led to a postern gate in the boundary wall of the chateau, "_mon cousin_, by your leave, an you'll take me as far as the Lodge, I could try and walk up the avenue to the chateau--alone." "But there's no one at the Lodge," he said, "and the avenue is over long." "Annette will be at the Lodge," she argued; "she goes thither every morning to air the rooms. The door will be open. I could slip in.... No one would see us...." Now that she suggested just what he would have liked to do, he was ready with opposition. "I should not like to leave you. You might be in pain again," he said. "Oh, my ankle is much better! It has had two hours' rest. I can wait at the Lodge till Annette comes." Mechanically he had obeyed, and turned back in the direction of the main gates of the park. The Lodge--a small stone pavilion--was just inside the gates. "We don't want to be spied from the chateau, do we, _mon cousin_?" added the young girl, whilst a ripple of laughter, musical as the song of a lark, helped to chase away the last lingering remnant of de Maurel's moodiness. "_Ma tante_ would be vastly shocked, for my hair is dishevelled, and my gown wet and stained. Laurent would be angry and father would scold...." She paused and suddenly uttered an exclamation of dismay. "Holy Virgin! what have I done?" "What is it?" he asked. "Mademoiselle Fernande, what is it? Are you in pain?" "No. No, it is not that. My foot is so much better ... but ... but...." She seemed ready to cry, and just now he felt that he would curse loudly and long if he saw her in distress. "In Heaven's name, Mademoiselle Fernande," he implored, "I entreat you to tell me what troubles you." "My shoe and my stocking," she murmured in a weak, trembling voice. "I left them beside the pool." Ronnay de Maurel literally gave a gasp of horror. A calamity such as this seemed to him to be beyond the confines of possibility. "Beside the pool!" he exclaimed aghast. "Impossible!" "How impossible?" she retorted impatiently. "I haven't my shoe and stocking on, have I?" He took a peep at the bare, rosy toes, which vied in delicacy with the apple-blossom overhead. "You certainly have not!" he replied. "Well? And have you got them in your pocket, _mon cousin_?" Sighing with regret, he vowed that he had not. "Then I must have left them by the pool," she concluded. "I'll go and fetch them," he said at once.