She presently recovered her composure, sat up in the carriage and smiled faintly. “I don’t know,” she said, “why I should mind your telling Lady Jennings whatever you please. But it is, perhaps, a little disconcerting to be frankly and candidly disbelieved, and the experience is new and strange to me.” Gerard hesitated what to say. “All I want to say to her,” he said, in a low voice which he could not keep steady, “is that I think you do rash things, and that you want someone to take care of you, as you are too reckless as to what you do yourself.” Miss Davison looked at him with a frown. “Do you still persist then,” said she, “in believing that it was I you saw that night in the crowd opposite Chislehurst House?” Gerard met her eyes fairly and frankly. “I’m quite sure of it,” he said simply. “Most extraordinary!” said she. He was annoyed with her for persisting in her pretense that he was mistaken. “And I am sure,” he went on stubbornly, “that Lady Jennings has an idea that there is something strange going on.” Miss Davison was prepared for this, evidently. “I shouldn’t like to answer for all the fancies the dear old lady takes into her head,” she said. “But I’m sorry that you should think it necessary to encourage her in them.” He could say nothing to this, but drew back, growing very red. Raising his hat, he was about to withdraw without another word, when Miss Davison, suddenly sitting up again, imperiously made an emphatic gesture of command to him to return. Then looking him full in the face she said coldly-- “I object to your trying to make mischief, Mr. Buckland, between Lady Jennings and me.” “I don’t want to make mischief, Miss Davison; I want to get your friends to take more care of you.” His tone was so quiet, so stubborn, that she looked frightened again. There was something feminine, helpless about her look and manner when she was threatened, which touched him and made him sorry that he had to seem so harsh. But remembering as he did the reference made by Lady Jennings to the doctrine of “doubles,” he was sure that the old lady guessed something, and he knew that, at all costs, he must find out the meaning of what he had seen. After a short pause, Miss Davison burst into a light laugh. “My friends, Mr. Buckland, my real friends,” she said coolly, “have a strong impression that I don’t need looking after, that I can take care of myself.” “Yes, I’ve no doubt you can take all the care of yourself that a girl can take,” said he boldly; “but that is not enough, Miss Davison, if I may daresay so, in the case of a lady as beautiful as you are and as determined to let nothing stand in the way of carrying out her ambitions.” Miss Davison, who had by this time quite recovered her outward serenity, laughed.