They began their usual walk--a few paces backward and forward, beneath the most sheltered part of the hedge, Anna taking his arm. Mademoiselle could see, as well as the darkness allowed her; but she could not hear. Her face, peeping out of the shadowy bonnet, was not unlike the face of a tiger. She crawled away. She had noticed as she turned into the field an iron gate that led into the garden, which the hedge skirted. She crept round to it, found it locked, and mounted it. It had spikes on the top, but the signora would not have cared just then had she found herself impaled. She got safe over it, and then considered how to reach the spot where they stood without their hearing her. Would she be baffled? _She_ be baffled! No. She stooped down, unlaced her boots, and stole softly on in her stockings. And there she was! almost as close to them as they were to each other. Where had the signora heard those gentle, timid tones before? A lovely girl, looking little more than a child, in her modest Quaker dress, rose to her mind's eye. She had seen her with Miss Ashley. She--the signora--knelt down upon the earth, the better to catch what was said. "Listeners never hear any good of themselves." It is a proverb too often exemplified, as the signora could have told that night. Herbert Dare was accounting for his late appearance, which he laid to the charge of the governess. He gave a description of the interview she had volunteered him in the garden at home--more ludicrous, perhaps, than true, but certainly not complimentary to the signora. Anna laughed; and the lady on the other side gathered that this was not the first time she had formed a topic of merriment between them. You should have seen her face. _Pour plaisir_, as she herself might have said. She stayed out the interview. When it was over, and Herbert Dare had departed, she put on her boots and mounted the gate again; but she was not so agile this time, and a spike entered her wrist. Binding her handkerchief round it, to arrest the blood, she returned to Pomeranian Knoll. Five hundred questions were showered upon her when she entered the drawing-room, looking calm and impassible as ever. Not a tress of her elaborate braids of hair was out of place; not a fold awry in her dress. Much wonder had been excited by her failing to appear at tea; Minny had drummed a waltz on her chamber door, but mademoiselle would not open it, and would not speak. "I cannot speak when I am lying down with those _vilaine_ headaches," remarked mademoiselle. "Have you a headache, mademoiselle?" asked Mrs. Dare. "Will you have a cup of tea brought up?" Mademoiselle declined the tea. She was not thirsty. "What have you done to your wrist, mademoiselle?" called out Herbert, who was stretched on a sofa, at the far end of the room. "My wrist? Oh, I scratched it." "How did you manage that?" "Ah, bah! it's nothing," responded mademoiselle. CHAPTER XXVII. THE QUARREL.