He mounted and rode slowly along the Riverside Road, partly suspecting Trefusis of some mystification, but inclining to believe in him, and, in any case, to take his advice as to Gertrude. The conversation he had overheard in the avenue still perplexed him. He could not reconcile it with Trefusis’s profession of disinterestedness towards her. His bicycle carried him noiselessly on its india-rubber tires to the place by which the hemlock grew and there he saw Gertrude sitting on the low earthen wall that separated the field from the road. Her straw bag, with her scissors in it, lay beside her. Her fingers were interlaced, and her hands rested, palms downwards, on her knee. Her expression was rather vacant, and so little suggestive of any serious emotion that Erskine laughed as he alighted close to her. “Are you tired?” he said. “No,” she replied, not startled, and smiling mechanically--an unusual condescension on her part. “Indulging in a day-dream?” “No.” She moved a little to one side and concealed the basket with her dress. He began to fear that something was wrong. “Is it possible that you have ventured among those poisonous plants again?” he said. “Are you ill?” “Not at all,” she replied, rousing herself a little. “Your solicitude is quite thrown away. I am perfectly well.” “I beg your pardon,” he said, snubbed. “I thought--Don’t you think it dangerous to sit on that damp wall?” “It is not damp. It is crumbling into dust with dryness.” An unnatural laugh, with which she concluded, intensified his uneasiness. He began a sentence, stopped, and to gain time to recover himself, placed his bicycle in the opposite ditch; a proceeding which she witnessed with impatience, as it indicated his intention to stay and talk. She, however, was the first to speak; and she did so with a callousness that shocked him. “Have you heard the news?” “What news?” “About Mr. Trefusis and Agatha. They are engaged.” “So Trefusis told me. I met him just now in the village. I was very glad to hear it.” “Of course.” “But I had a special reason for being glad.” “Indeed?” “I was desperately afraid, before he told me the truth, that he had other views--views that might have proved fatal to my dearest hopes.” Gertrude frowned at him, and the frown roused him to brave her. He lost his self-command, already shaken by her strange behavior. “You know that I love you, Miss Lindsay,” he said. “It may not be a perfect love, but, humanly speaking, it is a true one. I almost told you so that day when we were in the billiard room together; and I did a very dishonorable thing the same evening. When you were speaking to Trefusis in the avenue I was close to you, and I listened.” “Then you heard him,” cried Gertrude vehemently. “You heard him swear that he was in earnest.”