'Railways,' he said, 'railways; they are the white man's tentacles;' and Sir John gave me my first employment as an engineer." Miranda was silent for a long while after Charnock had ended his story. Charnock himself had nothing further to say. It was for her to speak, not for him to question. She had sent the glove. She knew why he had come. Miranda, however, took a turn along the flagged pathway, and leaned over the breast-high wall and pointed out a vulture above the valley, and talked in inattentive, undecided tones upon any impersonal topic. It was natural, Charnock thought, that she should wish to con over what he had told her. So he rose from his chair. "Shall I come back to-morrow?" he asked, and she rallied herself to answer him. "Will you?" she exclaimed. "I should be so glad," and checking the ardour of her words, she explained, "I mean of course if you have nothing better to do," and she examined a flower with intense absorption, and then looked at him pathetically over her shoulder, as he moved away. So again he lost sight of the Miranda of the balcony, and carried away his first impression, that he had met that afternoon with a stranger. His fervour of the morning changed to a chilling perplexity. He wondered at the change in her. Something else, too, seized upon his thoughts, and exercised his fancies. Why had she stood so long outside the door before she hurried in with her simulated surprise? How had she looked as she paused there, silent and motionless? That question in particular haunted him, for he thought that if only he could have seen her through the closed door he would have found a clue which would lead him to comprehend and to justify her. Absorbed by these thoughts he sat through dinner unobservant of his few neighbours at the long table. He was therefore surprised when, as he stood in the stone hall, lighting his cigar, a friendly hand was clapped down upon his shoulder, and an affable voice remarked:-- "Aha, dear friend! Finished the little job at Algeciras, I saw. What are you doing at Ronda?" "What are you?" asked Charnock, as he faced the irrepressible Major Wilbraham. "Trying to make seven hundred per annum into a thousand. You see I have no secrets. Now confidence for confidence, eh, dear friend?" and his eyes drew cunningly together behind the glowing end of his cigar. "I am afraid that I must leave you to guess." "Guessing's not very sociable work." "Perhaps that's why I am given to it," said Charnock, and he walked between the stone columns and up the broad staircase. The Major looked after him without the slightest resentment. "Slipped up that time, Ambrose, my lad," he said to himself, and sauntered cheerfully out of the hotel.