Amelia has passed her hand through Jim's arm--since his late increased kindness to her she has been led to many more little freedoms with him than she had hitherto permitted herself--and though she is very careful not to lean heavily or troublesomely upon him, yet the slight contact of her fingers keeps him reminded that she is there. Perhaps it is as well, since to-day he is conscious of such a strange tendency to forget everything, past, present, and to come. Has one of the monks' numb hands been laid upon his heart to lull it into so frozen a quiet? To-day he feels as if it were absolutely impossible to him to experience either pleasure or pain; as if to hold Elizabeth in his own arms, or see her in Byng's, would be to him equally indifferent. His apathy in this latter respect is to be put to the test sooner than he expects. Not indeed that Elizabeth is lying in Byng's arms--it would be a gross misrepresentation to say so, she being, on the contrary, most decorously poised on a camp-stool--least romantic of human resting places--when they come suddenly upon her and him in the course of their prowl round the inhospitable walls. She is sitting on her camp-stool, and he is lying on his face in the grass, just not touching her slim feet. The advancing party perceive the couple advanced upon before the latter are aware of their nearness; long enough for the former to realize how very much _de trop_ they will be, yet not long enough to enable them to escape unnoticed. Jim becomes aware of the very second at which Amelia recognises the unconscious pair, by an involuntary pinch of her fingers upon his arm, which a moment later she hastily drops. His own first feeling on catching sight of them--no, not his _very_ first--his very first is as if someone had run a darning-needle into his heart--but almost his first is to shout out to them in loud warning: "Be on your guard! we are close to you!" He will never forgive either himself or them if they ignorantly indulge in any endearment under his very eyes. But they do not. There are no interlacing arms to disentwine, nothing to make them spring apart, when at length they look up and take in the fact--an unwelcome fact it must needs be--of their invasion. On hearing approaching footsteps, Byng rolls over on his back in the grass; on perceiving that most of the footsteps are those of ladies, he springs to his feet. Elizabeth remains sitting on her camp-stool. "What a coincidence!" cries Cecilia, breaking into a laugh.