So they sat down at the farther end of the bowling-green, on a rustic seat by a horrible Georgian nymph, who, fortunately, was fast falling to decay. The others had entirely disappeared, but their voices could be distinguished from a neighbouring lawn. In the hearing, therefore, of the nymph alone, Mr Trenchard gave his fair listener a most full, true, and particular account of every hour that he had spent in the company of the Vicomte de Saint-Ermay, beginning with the episode of the horse-holding and ending with the farewell at Candé. When he ended, saying, “That is really all that I can remember about M. de Saint-Ermay—except that I took an uncommon fancy to him,” how was he to know whether the glance of gratitude which he then received was for the trouble which he had taken or for that last remark alone? At any rate, he had a most agreeable feeling of confederacy with its giver; so that when, on departing, he was warmly urged by Sir William and his daughter to come again, the probable arrival of the Marquise de Château-Foix being held out as an inducement, he replied no less warmly that he would do so. The pressure of Lucienne’s little fingers was still lingering in his as he rode away; for she had already learnt the English salutation, though he had supplemented it, as was fitting in a traveller, by the French. “They have a way with them, a style, a something, these French girls,” he reflected. “Now look at Louisa Oxenham, though she’ll make a treasure of a wife.” Would this commendation be merited by Mademoiselle d’Aucourt, as the spouse of M. de Château-Foix? He wondered. And as he turned in at his own gates, a half-hour later, he said abruptly: “God bless my soul! If I were a girl, I know which of those two men I should have chosen. I believe she regrets it! I’m sure she does! And that good-looking cousin . . . has he been playing fast and loose with her? I’d give something to know.” The same evening Mr Trenchard enormously startled, dismayed, and shocked the venerable relative who kept house for him by saying suddenly, as he stood in his drawing-room, and looked upon its brood of chairs, all clad in the most hideous chintzes procurable: “If a Frenchwoman had this room, now, aunt, she’d make something very different of it!” “Henry!” ejaculated the poor lady, absolutely petrified with horror. And before she slept that night she penned a long and tremulous letter to her brother the Admiral, detailing her conviction that Henry, while on his recent tour in France, had fallen into the clutches of one of those _dreadful_, _designing_, and _immoral_ women over there, and _probably a married one_. To the end of her days she never quite got rid of that most baseless and unworthy suspicion.