“I? Oh, no,” said Lovel, carelessly, “and in any case, why do we talk about him so much? he is not here, but to-morrow you will again be with him, and the day after that, and the day after that. Even now he is probably arrived breathless at the Manor House, where he will tell your father that that gipsy fellow snatched you away, and that he has lost you altogether. He has never given me anything but black looks, ever since he came to live here. How much have you told him about yourself and me?” “There was nothing to tell,” said Clare. “True,” said Lovel. “There was nothing to tell.” They were silent. She felt that he was in a highly dangerous mood. Calladine was not dangerous; violent, but not dangerous; not as Lovel’s contained quietness was dangerous. Lovel, at any moment, might suddenly leap upon her; he was so lithe and quick. Moreover, she felt now, in his company, that she was alone with him on a hill or a wide heath, for the people down in the field below had no significance whatever, no more than had Calladine, to whom she was promised. “I ought to go home now,” she said presently. “Oh, yes,” said Lovel, turning on her, “you ought to go home. Go home and tell them that the gipsy fellow took you out, rudely enough, but still into safety. Go and tell them that once or twice on the Downs you gave him a few kind words and that he presumed upon them to get you out of that tent to-night. Tell them that once he rejected your kindness,--which you offered out of your pity for him,--and drove you away with harsh words.” “We have not spoken since,” she said. “No,” he replied without comment. Suddenly they began talking quite naturally and gently with one another. “Who would have thought,” said Lovel, “that you would be coming to the circus. Not that I should have come, nor you, I fancy, either, had we known what we were to see. Yet we might have thought. Wild beasts turned to buffoons. I would have liked to let a tiger out of its cage, loose among the crowd. Did you see their eyes? yes, even the little pig-eyes of the bears. I wouldn’t like to look into the eyes of the tigers in their cages, when they stare through the bars. Trundled about over England in those cages.... Why did you come? I came to please poor Olver.” “And I because Mr. Calladine was dining at the Manor House, and I ... oh, there is nothing to do after dinner,” she finished lamely. “What do you do as a rule?” he inquired, with a passing curiosity. “I don’t know,” she replied. “Sometimes he talks to my father, sometimes we walk in the garden, sometimes I sing.” “You sing,” he repeated. “You sing.” “Sometimes he and my father go over the things in my father’s cases, and they forget me, and I sit in a corner with some stitching.” “Yes,” said Lovel, “and the windows are open down to the floor, and the moths and cockchafters fly in from the garden towards the lamps, and you let your stitching fall into your lap while you watch them.” Clare was utterly startled.