But Vansittart was calmly awaiting them at the cross roads, and reined round and accompanied her as a matter of course. She gave him a desperate glance as their eyes met, and it caused him to change his tactics. He had meditated an onslaught upon her emotions during their homeward ride. "It will keep," he sagely told himself, and after an uneventful canter and a little ordinary small talk he left her at her door without even an allusion to a next meeting. CHAPTER III She went to her room somewhat heavy-hearted. She was no woman of the world, and was taken aback by his unexpected change of manner. Her maid Julie was busy with a charming _toilette de bal_ just arrived from Paris: a gauzy robe over satin, richly sewn with flowers and foliage made of tiny seed pearls. "This will suit mademoiselle _a merveille_," exclaimed the little Frenchwoman. "And with that pearl _garniture_----" "I shall not go out to-night," she said, with a disgusted glance at the finery which seemed such hollow mockery. And as soon as she had changed her habit for a tea-gown, she locked herself in her boudoir, and stormily pacing the room, asked herself what this sudden chill in her lover meant. "I have gone too far--I have been too cold--I have lost him!" she told herself, wildly. "I cannot bear it! While there was the faintest of faint hope left--that I might be with him some day--I could bear--everything! But to see him look at me as if I were anybody, speak as if he did not care what became of me--no, no, I should soon go mad!" Flinging herself prone on her sofa, she clasped her throbbing head in both hands, and asked herself passionately what could be done. "I cannot, must not, lower myself by writing to him--and then, if he was the same again, I could not take advantage of it! Was ever poor wretched girl in such a miserable position as I am?" All seemed hopeless, gloomy, dark, until a sudden thought came like a brilliant flash of light. "He may be there, he will be there, to-night! Of course, he is a friend of the Duchess," she told herself. "That is what it meant! He knew we should meet there! He was teasing me--trying me!"