The words were hardly out of his lips before he regretted them. They insulted her. She was hardly the woman to sit still under an insult; but her manner again surprised him. He was almost prepared to be sent curtly to the right about, whereas she made no answer whatever. She coloured hotly, and rode forward ahead of him until they were well out of the town and descending the hill into the bottom of the valley. Then she fell back again by his side, and said: "Why is your face always so--illegible?" "Is it?" he asked. "It's a lid--a shut lid," she said. "One never knows what you think, how you are disposed." She spoke with some irritation perhaps, but sincerely, and without any effort at provocation. "I was not aware," returned Charnock. "You must set it down to habit, Mrs. Warriner. I was brought up in a hard school, and learned, no doubt, intuitively the wisdom of reticence." "Is it always wisdom?" she asked doubtfully, and it seemed a strange question to come from her whose business it was to speak, just as it was his to listen. But very likely her doubt was in this instance preferable to his wisdom. Some word of surprise at the change in her, perhaps one simple gesture of impatience, would have broken down the barrier between them. But he had taken the buffets of her provocations and her advances with, as she truly said, an illegible face. "Is it always wisdom?" she asked, and she added: "You were not so reticent when I first met you;" and just that inconsistency between his bearing at Lady Donnisthorpe's ball, and his inexpressive composure of these few last days, might have revealed to her at this moment what he thought, and how he was disposed, had she brought a cooler mind to consider it. For the man was not chary of expression when the world went well with him; it was only in the presence of disappointments, rebuffs, and aversions that his face became a lid. They left their horses at a farm-house, and climbed up the rough, steep slope to the windy ridge on which the old Roman town was built. They sat for a while upon the stones of the old wall, looking across the great level plain of olive trees, and poplars, and white villages gleaming in the sunlight. Here was a fitting moment for the story to be told, Charnock thought, and expected its telling. But he only saw that Miranda scrutinised his looks, and he only heard her gabbling of this triviality and that with a feverish vivacity. And no doubt his face betrayed less than ever what he thought and felt. "Shall I see you to-morrow?" she asked as they parted that afternoon outside her door. "I will come round in the morning after lunch," he replied, and she uttered a quick little sigh of pleasure, which made Charnock turn his horse with a sharp, angry tug at the rein, and ride quickly away across the bridge.