Bessie Edgefield was one of those sweetly constituted girls whom Nature has especially created to be a third party in a love affair; never to play the heroine in white satin, but always the confidante in white muslin. She walked beside her friend, placid, silent, save for an occasional monosyllable, and was of no more account than Suzette's shadow. "The Roebucks are taking leave," exclaimed Suzette, looking across the lawn to the groups on the terrace. "Mr. Carew, I'm afraid you are a sadly inattentive host." "Have I neglected you, Miss Vincent?" "You have neglected Mrs. Roebuck, which is much worse. She will be talking of your want of _savoir vivre_ all over Matcham." "Let her talk. She has been boring my mother with a cruelty worthy of Torquemada. She forgets that torture was illegal in England even in Bacon's time. See, they are all going away; but you and the General and Miss Edgefield must stay to tea, even if the Vicar is too busy to stop." The Vicar had quietly vanished, to resume the round of parish duties, quite content to leave his Bessie in comfortable quarters. The Roebucks were going, and the Morningtons were following their example; but General Vincent had no objection to stop to tea if his daughter and Miss Edgefield desired him to do so. He was smoking a cheroot, comfortably seated in a sheltered part of the terrace--a corner facing south, screened from east and north by an angle of the house, where the Mandarin-room projected from the main building--and he was absorbed in a discussion of Indian legendary lore with Mr. Carew, who owned to some knowledge of sanscrit, and had made Eastern fable and legend an especial study. Suzette and her father stayed till nearly seven o'clock, when Allan insisted on walking home with them, having suddenly discovered that he had had no walking that day. He had been cub-hunting from seven in the morning till nine; but he declared himself in need of walking exercise. Lady Emily went with them to the gate, and parted with Suzette as with a favourite of long standing. Allan was enraptured to see his mother's friendliness with the girl he loved; and it was all he could do to restrain his feelings during the walk to Marsh House. Perhaps it was only that gay temper of hers, that readiness to laugh at him and at all things in creation, which held him at a distance. He had made up his mind that she was to be his--that if she were to refuse him twenty times in twenty capricious moods of her light and airy temperament, there was somewhere in her nature a vein of serious feeling, and by that he would win her and hold her. * * * * * "You like Miss Vincent, mother?" he asked that evening, when he was sitting with his father and mother in the Mandarin-room after dinner.