Nothing can be milder than the form which this suggestion takes, and yet there is something in its shape that provokes him. "Free!" he interrupts tartly, "of course I am free! Have I a gouty father and a hysteric sister? Why should not I be free?" "I am very glad to hear it," rejoins she--the light that his first proposal to take her out had brought into her face growing brighter and more established--"because in that case there is nothing to prevent your meeting us at the villa, and----" "And seeing you and Mrs. Byng walking about with your arms round each other's necks, like a couple of schoolgirls," cries he, with a sort of spurious grumpiness. "I can't think why you should object to Amelia walking about with her arm round _Mrs._ Byng's neck," says Cecilia, whose attention to her "Etiquette" is apparently not so absorbing but that she has some to spare for the conversation going on in her neighbourhood. They all laugh a little; and harmony being restored, and Jim graciously vouchsafing to forgive Amelia for having ignored her for a sennight, she returns to her patient, and he to his hotel, where he is at once, contrary to his wish, pounced upon by Byng. For some reason, which he would be puzzled to explain to himself, he has for the last week rather avoided his friend's company--a task rendered easier by the disposition manifested by the young man's mother to monopolize him, a disposition to which Burgoyne has felt no inclination to run counter. It is without enthusiasm that he receives Byng's expressions of pleasure in their accidental meeting. "I have been searching for you, high and low." "Have you?" "Where have you been?" "I have been to the Anglo-Américain"--with a flash of inward self-congratulation at this query having been put to-day, instead of yesterday, or the day before. The other looks disappointed. "To the Anglo-Américain? I thought--I hoped; have you--seen _them_ lately?" Burgoyne has ceased to feign lack of understanding to whom the personal pronoun refers, and he answers with as much carelessness as at a moment's notice he can put on: "Why, yes, I have, once or twice." "Do they--do not they think it strange of me not to have been near them all this time?" "They may do"--dryly. "They did not say so?" "They did not; perhaps"--sarcastically--"the subject was too acutely painful for them to allude to." Frequently as he has exposed himself to them, his Mentor's sneers never fail to send the crimson racing into Byng's face, and it finds its way there now. It does not, however, prevent his proceeding, after a confused moment or two, with his anxious catechism. "She--she has not referred to the subject?" "What subject?" "To--to me?" "She has never mentioned your name. Stay"--his veracity winning a reluctant victory over his ill-nature--"one day she said that you were sunshiny, and that she liked sunshine."