“Ah, not at all!--_pas du tout!_” cried Lady Selina, who had a French mother and certain inherited French ways that added not a little to her provoking charm. “_M. le Colonel_ has made such big eyes at me I am positively frightened of him! And my dear mamma--do you know Sir Jasper, my dear widowed mother is at Wimbledon, and I have half a mind to go see her there--Mamma would be desolated if I were to travel under the escort of a gentleman who is not my husband. Since my Frederick is so tied up in his military duty--yes, you cruel man, you saw to that! But with Sir Jasper, Mamma knows Sir Jasper so well! Pray Mistress Landlady, bring me to a chamber where I can wash the dust off my face. ’Tis vile travelling in an open curricle. And you, Mr. Landlord, what of that parlour and that broth? How would it be, Sir Jasper, if you were to join me over this slight refection? We could discuss the journey.” Sir Jasper drew a long breath through dilated nostrils, and bowed, the corners of his lips tilting upwards in a smile of immense complacency. The landlady, who had been staring at the young Madam with amazement and disapproval, majestically led the way up the narrow stairs, expressing by a tremulous shake of her lace-capped head, and an occasional loud sniff, that such manners and customs were not to be encouraged on her premises. Pamela Pounce saw the look which Colonel Endacott cast at the fatuously smirking Sir Jasper. “There will be swords drawn over this, before my Lady Selina has had time to dry that dusty face of hers!” she thought. “And dear, to goodness, I have it in my heart to hope it may be Sir Jasper, for if not, it is out of the frying-pan into the fire with her, imp of mischief as she is!” Out of the frying-pan into the fire it was. Colonel Endacott and Sir Jasper strolled, to all appearance, very amicably together through the meadow gate, in the direction of a certain hazel copse by the river-side. In a very short time, Sir Jasper reappeared, alone; and, strolling back into the stable-yard of the Crown, directed, with the most genteel coolness, that a couple of ostlers should take a wheelbarrow and a chair, or maybe a hurdle, and carry in his friend, who had had an accident to his leg, and would be found, incapacitated, just beside yonder little copse. It was not a matter of the least consequence, he assured them--a mere sprain, a scratch, or something of the sort. The ostlers grinned. He cast a gold piece among them and passed on, treading jauntily, in quest of the parlour. Miss Pounce, eating bread-and-butter and cold meats, to a modest bowl of milk in the window seat of the now nearly deserted coffee-room, saw the gallant gentleman’s return, and understood.