"Mr. Chaytor!" she gasped, for her heart was beating so fast that she could hardly speak. "Oh, how glad I am! It was very foolish of me, but I never can bear to be followed in a lonely place." "I was afraid I frightened you?" he said, coming to her side, "but you were walking so fast that I found it difficult to overtake you. Forgive me, I know I have no right to lecture, but at this hour the golf links is far too lonely a place for a young lady." "Yes, you are right," returned Waveney, touched by this kind interest in her welfare, "and I must never walk here again so late. But"--with a sigh of regret--"I do love it so." "Do you?" returned Mr. Chaytor, quickly. "I wonder why." But with his habitual reserve he forbore to add that it was his favourite walk. "It is so wide," she replied, in her earnest voice. "All this space with nothing between you and the sky makes one feel so free and happy. The sunsets are always so beautiful here, and if it were not for the loneliness I should love to watch the darkness, like a big black ogre, swallow up all the lovely light." It was a pity Waveney could not see Mr. Chaytor's smile. "Shall we stand and watch it now?" he said, indulgently. "You have a safe escort, so we need not fear your ogre. Only you must not take cold." But Waveney only thanked him, and said that she was late already, and that they had better go. What a walk that was! and how Waveney remembered it afterwards! If Mr. Chaytor had laid himself out to please and interest her, he could not have succeeded better. Books, pictures, accounts of his old summer wanderings! And yet not for one moment did Waveney feel that he was talking down to her level. It seemed the spontaneous outpouring of a well-bred, intellectual man, glad to impart information to a congenial companion. But if Waveney was charmed and interested, certainly Mr. Chaytor was gratified. Miss Ward's bright intelligence, her racy and picturesque remarks, her frankly confessed ignorance, were all delightful to him; since the old Manor days he had seen so few girls, and none of them had attracted him in the least. There was something unique, out of the common, about Miss Ward; he felt vaguely that he would like to know more of her. Perhaps it was this feeling that made him say presently "I am afraid you have forgotten your little friend Betty"--for he knew all about that meeting on the Embankment. Betty had given him a most realistic and graphic account. "And the little lady did warm my hands so, Uncle Theo,"--and here Bet rubbed away at his hands until she was red in the face--"and all the time she did talk, and her great big eyes were laughing at me." "Bet has a good memory for her friends, and she often talks about you!" continued Thorold. "She is a fascinating little person, even to me, though I do not profess to understand children. She is full of surprises. You never get to the end of her. My sister fairly worships her!"