"To be sure I'm fit, why shouldn't I be fit? I lead, oh, such a healthy life," retorted she, with mocking emphasis. "I eat, and I sleep, and I'm out all day. I do nothing but health from morning to night. Well?" "Did you really miss me, Leo?" "Humph!" said Leo, beginning to walk on. "Did you know I had come back?" pursued he. "Did you think I should be here about this time? Did you----" "Think you'd bother me with a lot of silly questions?" Leo whose first greeting had been simple and natural, assumed a pettish, artificial air. "Can't you think of anything more amusing to say than, 'Did you, did you, did you?'" "Ha--ha--ha!" "And then to laugh idiotically!" "I don't believe you missed me a bit, Leo." "Neither do I, now I come to think of it. I forget when you went." "Two months ago to-day. Don't you remember? Don't you----" "And now it will be, 'Don't you--don't you--don't you?' Why should I remember? What is it to me that I should remember?" "Anyhow you said you had missed me." She had said it, and he had heard it, and stuck to the point like a leech. It mattered not that he had come very near to quarrelling with Leo before going off on his annual round of shooting visits; that she had been capricious and disdainful, and had once gone so far as to tell him that he bored her--(which no one had ever openly told Val before)--he had forgotten all that; and though during his absence he had also forgotten a good deal besides, and found other girls pretty and attractive, no sooner was he back at home than the needle of his mental compass flew round to its old point. He must needs hurry over to the Abbey, and take the field-path in which he had so often walked and talked with Leonore. He had never made love to her; his grandmother had told him not. Delighted as the old lady was with the turn events were taking, she had the wit to see that undue haste might ruin all, and enjoined caution with fervour. "Be friends, but no more--at present, Val." Furthermore, it was at Mrs. Purcell's instigation that the shooting visits were prolonged beyond their usual limits on the present occasion. She got painters into the house, and made them an excuse for bidding Valentine keep away if he could;--and her manner of placing the position before him piqued his vanity, as she knew it would. "If you have no more invitations, return, and I will make a shift to house you somewhere," she wrote;--but of course a popular young man is never short of invitations; and the autumn so wearily dragged through by Leonore, was full of gaiety and variety for her friend.