"This begins to grow exciting. The plot develops!" said Mademoiselle gaily to herself, when the fifth day of the last week in the year was reached, and Mr Geoffrey Hilliard made his fifth appearance on the scene in transparently accidental-on-purpose manner. On the first day he had been discovered assiduously pumping up the tyres of a bicycle immediately outside the Castle gates; on the second, he was lounging about the village street with an air of boredom which showed that he had exhausted all the objects of interest long before the O'Shaughnessy party passed by on their morning walk; on the third, he paid a formal call in the afternoon and stayed a good two hours by the clock, for which breach of etiquette he was so much concerned that he was compelled to come again the next day to apologise, and hope the ladies were not fatigued. Bridgie smiled polite reassurements, but Esmeralda lay back in her seat and naughtily yawned, as though in protest against her sister's words. She affected to conceal her weariness, but it was a transparent pretence, and the young fellow's eyes twinkled with amusement. Since the moment of their first meeting there had been this pretence of antagonism, this playing at fighting on the girl's part; but, as Bridgie had foretold, the man seemed to find it rather an encouragement than otherwise, and his smile was never more bright and self-confident than after an exhibition like the present. "Miss Joan seems to have suffered," he said boldly. "I feel truly guilty; but won't you allow me to remedy the mischief? If I might make a suggestion, it's a perfect winter afternoon, and you promised to show me the remains of that old ruin in your grounds. Don't you think that half an hour's walk before tea would freshen you up?" "I detest ruins; they are so dull," said Esmeralda ungraciously; but Mr Hilliard still continued to smile and to look at her in expectant fashion, and presently, almost against her will, as it seemed, she rose from her chair and moved across the room. "Of course, if you really want to see them! It will only take a few minutes. Come then, Pixie! You were asking me to come out. It will do you good to come too." Bridgie and Mademoiselle exchanged a quick glance of amusement at the look of disgust which passed over the visitor's face, and which all his politeness was not able to conceal; but Pixie pranced after her sister with willing step, for it had never entered into her heart to believe it possible that there could exist a living creature unto whom her society could be otherwise than rapturously welcome. In the cloak-room off the hall she put on two odd shoes, the two which came first to hand, and a piebald sealskin jacket, which, according to tradition, had descended from a great-aunt, and which was known in the household as "The jacket," and worn indiscriminately by whosoever might happen to need a warm wrap.