We walked down an alley of cypress trees without speaking, then we stopped, for the sound of a gong came roaring from the house. It was the luncheon gong, so said Geraldine, and I suddenly woke up from a reverie to remember that I was not in the seventeenth but the nineteenth century. CHAPTER XIII "YOU WERE NOT DRESSED LIKE THIS" The old clergyman who lives at Ashworth has just been. He comes twice a week and eats a biscuit and drinks a glass of wine, and tells me we should all think on the future life, or the life to come. He asked me what I was writing, and I said--nothing. Well--that day I had luncheon all alone. Where that other strange being had luncheon, or whether she had luncheon at all, I don't know; I had luncheon alone, and I had chops for luncheon. What did James Wilder mean by sending me here to be driven mad? What was driving me mad? Why, Geraldine was. I had sprung at one bound into the most fabulous world of love. I could have eaten that snail she lifted on to the leaf, just because she touched it. The old butler was meandering round the room with a dish of vegetables in his hand. "James," I said. "Ma'am." "I have fallen in love with your Miss Geraldine." "May God be thanked, ma'am." "James," in a coaxing voice, "I want to go out for a drive with him--I mean with her--with Miss Geraldine. Do you understand?" "Yes, ma'am, and so shall I tell the horses to be put in?" "Why, yes, after luncheon, that is, if Miss Geraldine likes; do you think she would like?" "Ma'am," in a voice like the voice of a ghost, "Miss Geraldine has been a-speaking of you to me; she comes to me, ma'am, to tell any little trouble that may happen like as she was a boy, which she is, may God in Heaven bless her; and she came to me last night after you'd a-gone to bed, and she said, 'James, who is Beatrice Sinclair?' Lord, ma'am, you might ha knocked me down with your finger. 'Why,' I says, Miss Geraldine, 'she's the lady just come.' Then she says 'James,' and she held down her head and all her little face grew red, 'Will she ever go away again?' 'Why, Miss Geraldine?' said I. 'Because if she does,' said she, 'I shall die; I've been waiting for her and thinking of her for years, and if she leaves me now I shall die:' those were her words." A bucket of vitriol emptied into a furnace those words were to me.