Consequently, Henriette’s riding lesson should not be interfered with tomorrow. When Hutchins Burley came at five o’clock, he would find her out. Tableau of a raging ogre! His fury would know no bounds, and he would surely embellish Janet’s life history so that M. St. Hilaire should put the worst interpretation on everything. Well, let him do his vilest. Come what may, time and the hour would run through the roughest day. Losing Henriette!—Ah, that would be a bitter pill to swallow. Still, it wasn’t the first bitter pill and it wouldn’t be the last. In every other way, she felt ready for a change. *III* "Can I see you for a few minutes?" said M. St. Hilaire to Janet, intercepting her outside his study, a little after six o’clock next day. She and Henriette were on their way upstairs to take off their riding clothes and to dress for dinner. "If you two are going to chatterbox, I shall take a little nap," said Henriette, climbing drowsily up another flight of stairs to her room. "Don’t be too long, _mon pere_," she added, stopping half-way and looking down over the banisters. "I’m even more hungry than sleepy. Jeanette, please wake me when you come up." Janet, from within the study, promised to do so. Neither her voice nor her manner betrayed her apprehensiveness. Her sailor hat was set rather jauntily on her head. Her light-brown riding coat and breeches made a most becoming costume, one that showed the undulating grace of her movements to excellent advantage. M. St. Hilaire followed her into the study and closed the door a shade too circumspectly. His glances and the vibrant tones of his voice puzzled her considerably. She could guess the substance of what he meant to convey but not the form in which he meant to convey it. "That man—" he began in a hesitant manner. "Mr. Burley, the man I said was coming today?" "He came. You didn’t tell me what he was coming for." "I knew he’d do it so much better." "He treated me to a long, long story about you." "Yes, I rather thought he would." "Oh, so you knew that, too?" "I had no cause to suspect him of amiable intentions," she said, swinging her sailor hat by the elastic band. "I suppose he told you that I lived with Claude Fontaine?" "Yes, but of course, I—" "Oh, it’s quite true." M. St. Hilaire, nonplused by her candor, stroked his auburn beard and feasted on the sight of her as she sat in an armchair not far away. The indefinable suggestion of a devil-may-care mood enhanced her vital charm until it stirred, thrilled, intoxicated him. "Perhaps—at one time—you have loved this Burley?" he asked, nursing the suspicion. "A beast like that? Never!" He moved his chair very closely to hers. "Just Monsieur Fontaine?" "You don’t expect me to go into details?" she said, coloring deeply. "No, no, my dear. But—what has been, can be. Is it not so?" "I don’t know what you mean."