At certain points, where the high mattress-like hedges are a little thin, you can almost see through them; and several times we had caught sight of a scarlet shadow, accompanied by a young man in checks. Now, at the gate, we came full tilt upon this scarlet. Her wide hat and buttons only were black, and from her bosom projected an enormous frill, very white against the red cloth, that gave her the appearance of a pouter pigeon. She had lost Lord Ernest or the President of the Board of Trade or whoever her companion was, and of course there was no avoiding her. "_You_ here!" she cried, seizing both Evie's hands and setting her head so far back and on one side that it was half lost behind the frill. "Vell!" (I write it so, though her accent was in reality less marked.) "This _is_ delightful!--You see, Mr Jeffries----!" I was mortified, but couldn't very well show it. I laughed. "Oh! What do I see?" "Dear Evie and I do meet after all!" she half jested. "Oh!" I laughed again. "Well, if that's all, you could have met long ago. I assumed that you didn't come up to see us because you didn't want to." It was, of course, lame in the extreme, but Miss Levey saw fit to affect to believe it. Again she put her head back like an inquisitive bird, dandling Evie's hands up and down. "Oh, _I_ thought I wasn't wanted! So of course I stayed away.... Vell, Evie, I _am_ glad!" So Evie said she was glad, and I said that I was glad too, with something about the ridiculousness of such old acquaintances standing on ceremony, and Miss Levey, I knew, was the only glad one of the three. "Isn't it annoying, the way we always find ourselves at this gate!" she said, when at last she had dropped Evie's hands. "Aschael and I have been here at least ten times! You ought to know the way out, Mr Jeffries, a clever man like you!" "I'm afraid I don't, but there's the man up the perch there--he'll always point out the way." "Oh, but one doesn't like to be beaten!" she said, with a covert look at me. "Dear me, I'm quite hot! I think Aschael must have given me the slip. Perhaps you wouldn't mind finding him for me, Mr Jeffries?" My polite "With pleasure" didn't in the least represent my feelings, but as I thought I should recognise the pawnbroker's assistant who had brought our Arab horse-tamers, I bade them stay where they were, and left them. After I had found the ringleted Aschael it took us half-an-hour to escape from the pair of them, and even then it was done only at the cost of the invitation I had so obstinately withheld. Miss Levey was to come up with me from the F.B.C. on the following Wednesday evening, and Aschael was to fetch her away again at ten o'clock. It seemed quite a nicely balanced point whether she would kiss Evie or not when she left, but she did not, and for some minutes after we had lost sight of them I saw the man up the perch pointing out turnings and heard his calling to them.