Taking a crown piece from his purse he spun it along the grass to some distance, and the girls rushed after it to search for and find it, a task of some difficulty. 'Sir, sir,' said Alison, tremulous with indignation, 'you ought not to have done that.' 'Why?' 'I am the governess of these girls, and responsible for them.' 'Absurd--a governess, you! One might as well expect to see a queen or a professional beauty filling the post. Clever this governess dodge of yours,' he continued, with a kind of insolence peculiar to himself. 'I suppose these girls are your nieces--little decoy ducklings to play propriety? And how is our mutual friend, old Cad--I mean Lord Cadbury? Seen him lately? No answer? Quarrelled, I suppose--these things never last long; but you are as charming as ever. How bad of you to leave me as you did that night in the Café au Progrès!' Alison called the children to her side and walked away. There was in her whole air and manner a conscious dignity that might have quieted the presumptuous coxcomb and _roué_ who dared to address her, while affliction had touched her features with something in expression that was beyond even beauty; but Dehorsey was one of those men who had a total disbelief in any feminine purity. 'Where do you live, little one?' he asked, while deliberately following her. Alison made no reply, but looked round to see if Archie was near. He was in sight, but an appeal to him just then would have been unwise, for, old though he was, Dehorsey would have felt the full weight of his walking staff. 'How dare you, coward that you are, to molest me thus!' exclaimed Alison. 'A rough word from such lips as yours,' he said, mockingly, but changing colour nevertheless; 'but as an old friend----' 'Friend!' 'Votre pardon, mademoiselle--acquaintance then.' Alison quitted the Gardens in haste, and hurried home with her two charges; and she was afterwards compelled to relinquish promenading there, one of her chief pleasures, as Dehorsey was always on the watch for her, and more than once had followed her at a little distance to the door of the house in Pembridge Square. She was thus obliged to remain more indoors than she was wont to do; and, to add to her annoyance there, she was considerably afflicted by much more than she relished of the society of the loud and fast Miss De Jobbyns; for that young lady had recently found an admirer, or--as she confidently alleged--a lover, and in her vanity and exultation was never weary of expatiating to Alison on his merits and wealth, his looks, his phrases, his dress, the 'button-holes' she made for him, and how she and her mamma contrived to waylay him in the park or the Row and elsewhere, to all of which Alison's listened wearily and without interest, not even caring to inquire his name. She had her own sad thoughts of love, and they were enough for her.