"I supposed he would be. He came out an hour ago to sketch." "Have you been looking for him?" Mrs. Adney asked. "A little; not very much," said Lady Mellifont. Each of the women rested her eyes with some intensity, as it seemed to me, on the eyes of the other. "We'll look for him _for_ you, if you like," said Mrs. Adney. "Oh, it doesn't matter. I thought I'd join him." "He won't make his sketch if you don't," my companion hinted. "Perhaps he will if _you_ do," said Lady Mellifont. "Oh, I dare say he'll turn up," I interposed. "He certainly will if he knows we're here!" Blanche Adney retorted. "Will you wait while we search?" I asked of Lady Mellifont. She repeated that it was of no consequence; upon which Mrs. Adney went on: "We'll go into the matter for our own pleasure." "I wish you a pleasant expedition," said her ladyship, and was turning away when I sought to know if we should inform her husband that she had followed him. She hesitated a moment; then she jerked out oddly: "I think you had better not." With this she took leave of us, floating a little stiffly down the gorge. My companion and I watched her retreat, then we exchanged a stare, while a light ghost of a laugh rippled from the actress's lips. "She might be walking in the shrubberies at Mellifont!" "She suspects it, you know," I replied. "And she doesn't want him to know it. There won't be any sketch." "Unless we overtake him," I subjoined. "In that case we shall find him producing one, in the most graceful attitude, and the queer thing is that it will be brilliant." "Let us leave him alone--he'll have to come home without it." "He'd rather never come home. Oh, he'll find a public!" "Perhaps he'll do it for the cows," Blanche Adney suggested; and as I was on the point of rebuking her profanity she went on: "That's simply what I happened to discover." "What are you speaking of?" "The incident of day before yesterday." "Ah, let's have it at last!" "That's all it was--that I was like Lady Mellifont: I couldn't find him." "Did you lose him?" "He lost _me_--that appears to be the way of it. He thought I was gone." "But you did find him, since you came home with him." "It was he who found _me_. That again is what must happen. He's there from the moment he knows somebody else is." "I understand his intermissions," I said after a short reflection, "but I don't quite seize the law that governs them."