"What, the girl? Oh, yes, if she happens to be of the sort that have a will of their own. A girl like that can make herself very disagreeable, I've heard. I suppose on the whole, anyhow, it can't mean much good to her," said Charley, taking a sudden thought. "It would be better for her on the whole if she wasn't so pretty. Don't you think so? Though Roger Ridley is as obstinate as a pony, and if he once took a thing into his head--but, after all, I don't suppose he could be quite such a fool," Charley said, with a pause of consideration. Abel looked at him keenly with a suppressed glare in his eyes. "Such a fool as to think of making the dressmaker his wife?" "Oh, come!" cried Charley; "when you put it in words--and in cold blood--no one surely would be quite such a fool as that." There was a singing in Abel's ears, a convulsive tremor ran through him. It was his sister of whom this innocent babbler was speaking; but who could suspect anything of the kind? Roger strolled back by the waterside; but then he recollected that he had something to do, which made it necessary for him to pass again through the village--indeed, that he was compelled to go, though he did not wish it, by business, that infallible force which every one must obey. And when he had taken that turn he went on with more alacrity. Quite necessary! It was the blacksmith he thought he wanted to see, for servants never give your orders correctly. He went on--but not directly towards the blacksmith's. A green lane is more pleasant than a hard high-road. He would go that way for the sake of his foot, which certainly hurt him a good deal. He could not help wondering what that little flirt would say if she knew that this very afternoon he had been in danger of his life. Would she mind? Would it have made any difference to her one way or another if he had come down headlong from off that archway and broken his neck, and never spoken again? She would perhaps have met Featherstonhaugh in the lane, and heard all about it from him. Heaven and earth! Though Roger had not died, and had no intention of doing so, the idea of Featherstonhaugh reporting to Lily all the details of his dying, and making use of the incident as a means of approaching her, made him frantic. He went very slowly through the lane. The light was beginning to wane, for it had been already late when they left the Castle. He looked up to the back window of Miss Prentice's house, and thought he saw some one there. Here was a chance at least of knowing whether she had got his letter. He made a gesture of appeal, beckoning to her, though he could not even be sure that it was Lily--a dangerous experiment. Of course, he said to himself, he had never thought of this when he came through the lane for the sake of his bad foot. Neither had Lily ever thought of it when she went by chance to the staircase window. But the result was that she did stroll out, and that he did meet her, at Miss Prentice's back-door.