‘Good-morning!’ said she. ‘I am glad you have found your way here. Did you know I was here?’ ‘No; I was strolling through the woods,’ said Signor Oriole, ‘and I came round this way--that is all.--Ah, Riemann,’ he added, with a glance more piercingly keen than he had ever bestowed upon that young man, ‘you are here, then! I thought I heard you telling Mrs. Hastings you were going to sketch by the river?’ ‘I changed my mind. It was so blazingly hot by the river. Mrs. Marchmont once kindly told me I might come here when I liked, and I availed myself of her permission.’ ‘What are you drawing?’ asked Signor Oriole dryly. ‘I have not yet decided. Would you have me turn my back upon Mrs. Marchmont, and sink myself in a sketch?’ asked Hans, in even a worse humour. Fulvia had become very grave. Her natural spirit of truth and frankness liked not these evasions and subterfuges. Why need he have told anyone where he was going? He was a free agent. Then she felt sure that he had done it out of consideration for her. He did not know how perfectly indifferent she felt to all outsiders and what they thought. He wished to shield her. It was all right. It was his true and noble self. ‘I am going away now. I am wanted at home, and cannot stay longer,’ she said. ‘Good-morning, Mr. Riemann.--Will you come with me?’ she added, turning to Signor Oriole. ‘Willingly.--A rivederci, Riemann.’ They walked away towards the Hall. Hans, left alone, looked dark and angry. ‘Women will be women to the end of the world,’ he told himself with the conviction of one who has made a discovery. ‘Worship them, and they insult you. Bully them, and they worship you. That has always been my experience.’ * * * * * ‘Where is Mrs. Hastings this morning?’ asked Fulvia. ‘She has just gone out with her brother and the _bambina_. I trust,’ said Signor Giuseppe, ‘that you were not as displeased with me as Riemann evidently was, for intruding upon you. I assure you it happened entirely by accident.’ Fulvia’s face flushed. ‘Do not speak to me like that!’ she exclaimed in a hurried voice. ‘I am always glad to see you--everywhere, and at any time. You have the right to come where I am.’ ‘As for rights, we will say nothing,’ he said sadly. ‘I know you used to be glad to see me in the old days--when you used to penetrate into my little dark room, and sit upon my bed, cross-legged, like a tailor, seize upon one of my books, and ask questions. Do you remember?’ ‘Do I remember?’ ‘No matter what I was doing,’ he pursued with a smile, ‘your questions began. You would read aloud; you would know the meaning of everything; you----’ ‘I must have been a dreadful little nuisance,’ said Fulvia, in a voice that was not quite steady. ‘Oh, indeed yes! I often showed you that I thought so, did I not?’