Amelia does not at once follow her example. She remains standing where she was, her arms hanging listlessly by her sides, and the expression of crestfallenness deepened on her fagged face. Her lover is touched by her look, and, going up to her, lays his hand kindly and solicitously on her shoulder. "Umbrellas are not what they were in my days," he says, trying to smile. "You are quite as wet as Cis, though you do not proclaim your sufferings nearly so loudly. Had not you better go and see whether the chambermaid owns two pairs of dry stockings?" She lifts her eyes with wistful gratitude to his. "This is my treat," she says slowly; "my first treat to you; oh, poor Jim!" There is a depth of compassion in her tone as disproportioned to the apparent cause as had been Mrs. Le Marchant's anxiety for her daughter's return, and beneath it he winces. "Why do you pity me?" he inquires half indignantly. "Am I-- "'A milksop; one that never in his life Felt so much cold as over shoes in snow?' What do I care for a little rain?" Adding cheerfully, "You shall give me a second treat, dear; we will come here again by ourselves when the sun shines." "By ourselves--when the sun shines!" echoes she, as if repeating a lesson; and then she goes off docilely, in obedience to his suggestion, in search of dry raiment. He rejoins Mrs. Le Marchant, whose unaccountable fears have led her beyond the house's shelter out into the rain, where she stands looking down that river of mud which represents the road by which she hopes to see the truants reappear. "I think you are unnecessarily alarmed," he says, in a reassuring and remonstrating tone. "What harm could have happened to them?" She does not answer, her eyes, into which the rain is beating under her umbrella brim, still fixed upon the empty road. "Is she--is she apt to take cold?" he asks, his own tone catching the infection of her vague and nameless disquiet. "Yes--no--not particularly, I think. Oh, it is not that!"--her composure breaking down into an unaffected outburst of distress. "It is not that! Do not you understand? Oh, how unwilling I was to come here to-day! It is--do not you see? Oh, I should not mind in the least if it had been you that were with her!" "If it had been I that was with her?" repeats Jim slowly, not at the first instant comprehending, nor even at the second quite taking in the full, though unintentional, uncomplimentariness of this speech; which, however, before his companion again takes up her parable, has tinglingly reached--what? His heart, or only his vanity? They lie very close together. "Why did not he go home with his mother?" pursues Mrs. Le Marchant, still in that voice of intense vexation. "It would have been so much more natural that he should, and I am sure that she wished it." "You are making me feel extremely uncomfortable," says Burgoyne gravely; "when I remember that it was I who introduced him to you."