Presently we were walking briskly together down the drive between the green cliffs of laurel; the air was sweet with the scent of sun-warmed lilac, the sky was cloudless, the morning all sunshine—everything, in fact, was as unlike my own mood as might be. For I’d guessed that I was “in for” something. And although I didn’t yet know what this might be—although it seemed a whole pre-existence since the day when the prospect of a few words from the Head of the firm made his trembling typist feel that the end of all things was at hand!—I still felt, amongst other emotions, a little _frightened_. Again I saw in my mind that odd, half-amused, half-threatening stare which the Governor had bent upon me that first evening when I said good-night at the door of his den. Supposing I wasn’t able to keep the reins in my own hands after all? A new nervousness mingled in me with an utterly new form of resentment. I hadn’t long to wait for my few words from the Governor. He began—rather to my surprise—without his traditional “Now, Miss Trant,” but grimly and stiffly as I don’t suppose Mrs. Waters knows he can speak. “Now! There is something I wanted to say to you. I am sorry to trouble you, but I am afraid that I have to ask you to be a little more careful in your manner to me.” Which of the two manners was he going to fix upon? The one I reserved for him alone, or the pretty one that I used to him before his people? “My manner? Oh!” I turned a dismayed face, the face of a typist caught out in some careless mistake, up to his as we walked along. “I am afraid I don’t quite know what you mean.” “You do,” said his face. But he only said concisely: “I mean the tone you sometimes feel called upon to adopt towards me, as just now, at breakfast. Of course when we are alone you must please yourself entirely. But that will hardly do before others.” Ah, it was for Manner A, then, that he’d settled to take me to task. So none of it had been lost upon him, then; none of the unearthly sweetness hiding home-thrusts that only he was able to recognize as such! None of the elaborate ways in which I’ve been pretending to think of little things to please him; quoting (in public) bits of his songs that I call my favourites, picking a sulphur-coloured pansy—that he daren’t _not_ wear!—for his button-hole, then making him take it out to let me change it for a leaf of scented geranium, because there were table decorations of those at the Savoy “the day we lunched there before you chose my ring; do you remember?” I hope he’ll never cease to remember _and to regret_ “that day!”