She smiled up at him with limpid eyes. "Are you going to echo Mrs. Askwith’s warning to ’keep Muster Nin at a distance’?" she replied in the same undertone. "Well, you needn’t be uneasy. We are not hitting it off. I have had to administer one or two snubs, and he now says he thinks I was born to be the mistress of a reformatory." They went out together into the frosty twilight. When they had gone some steps she remarked: "The hall is not a safe place in which to talk. You never know where the ayah is. However, she is welcome to have overheard all that we have said to-day." "Mrs. Askwith’s advice was good; I am in a position to tell you that it was by no means unnecessary. But I think you are all right; you seem to have plenty of sense. Would it be an impertinence if I asked how you happened to come here?" "Oh, very simply. I advertised, and Mrs. Guyse answered my advertisement. It wasn’t quite what I wanted, but they pay well, and I thought it would be a beginning. I don’t expect to be here very long, and if it grows in any way uncomfortable I shall leave." "Good!" he said; and added after thought, "I wish you were not quite so isolated. You have literally no neighbours. There is nobody nearer than the vicarage at Lachanrigg, and Mr. and Mrs. Baines are both over seventy, so during the winter they might as well not exist as far as the Pele is concerned." They strolled out across the Bull-drop. Just as they reached the outer gate Ninian Guyse rode up, mounted on Deloraine. "Hallo!" said he, with a swift glance at the two. "Risked your precious Fordette on these roads, eh?" "Don’t you sneer at my tin-kettle! She’s as game a little machine as ever hummed along these God-forsaken tracks," replied Balmayne. "Well, I’ve seen your mother, and she ought soon to be all right. Just a slightly relaxed throat which has sent up her temperature. I am telling Miss Innes to persuade her to pass more time in your billiard-room, or library, whatever you call it. It is spacious and airy, and while she goes out so little, she must take all the air she can get indoors." "Yes, the doctor has put an idea into my head," chimed in Olwen, as the doctor shook hands, and hastened to where his chauffeur was cranking up the motor. "Good-bye, doctor, and thank you! I’ll expect the medicine by the postman to-morrow and yourself the day after—and I’ll remember all your directions!" The car started. Ninian, after standing, a moment as if in profound thought, took Deloraine’s bridle, and Olwen and he walked across the causeway. "Dr. Balmayne has been telling me that they call this the Bull-drop," said she conversationally. "Oh, indeed! What more has he been telling you, I wonder?" "Something extremely interesting—that there is a well under the floor of the hall. I do so want to see it!" "There’s nothing to see."