Captain Monk was recovering rapidly. His sudden illness had been caused by drinking some cold cider when some out-door exercise had made him dangerously hot. The alarm and apprehension had now subsided; and Mrs. Hamlyn, arriving three days ago in answer to the hasty summons, was thinking of returning to London. "You are cheating!" called out Kate, flying off at a tangent to cross her governess's path. "You've no right to get before me!" "Gently," corrected Miss West. "My dear, we have run enough for to-day." "We haven't, you ugly, cross old thing! Aunt Eliza says you _are_ ugly. And--" The young lady's amenities were cut short by finding herself suddenly lifted off her feet by Mr. Harry Carradyne, who had come behind them. "Let me alone, Harry! You are always coming where you are not wanted. Aunt Eliza says so." A sudden light, as of mirth, illumined Harry Carradyne's fresh, frank countenance. "Aunt Eliza says all those things, does she? Well, Miss Kate, she also says something else--that you are now to go indoors." "What for? I shan't go in." "Oh, very well. Then that dandified silk frock for the new year that the dressmaker is waiting to try on can be put aside until midsummer." Kate dearly loved new silk frocks, and she raced away. The governess followed more slowly, Mr. Carradyne talking by her side. For some months now their love-dream had been going on; aye, and the love-making too. Not altogether surreptitiously; neither of them would have liked that. Though not expedient to proclaim it yet to Captain Monk and the world, Mrs. Carradyne knew of it and tacitly sanctioned it. Alice West turned her face, blushing uncomfortably, to him as they walked. "I am glad to have this opportunity of saying something to you," she spoke with hesitation. "Are you not upon rather bad terms with Mrs. Hamlyn?" "She is with me," replied Harry. "And--am _I_ the cause?" continued Alice, feeling as if her fears were confirmed. "Not at all. She has not fathomed the truth yet, with all her penetration, though she may have some suspicion of it. Eliza wants to bend me to her will in the matter of the house, and I won't be bent. Old Peveril wishes to resign the lease of Peacock Range to me; I wish to take it from him, and Eliza objects. She says Peveril promised her the house until the seven years' lease was out, and that she means to keep him to his bargain." "Do you quarrel?" "Quarrel! no," laughed Harry Carradyne. "I joke with her, rather than quarrel. But I don't give in. She pays me some left-handed compliments, telling me that I am no gentleman, that I'm a bear, and so on; to which I make my bow." Alice West was gazing straight before her, a troubled look in her eyes. "Then you see that I _am_ the remote cause of the quarrel, Harry. But for thinking of me, you would not care to take the house on your own hands."