Yes--she had decided at last--she would keep her secret--her first of any importance. She would not risk interference with what looked like a glowing adventure kindled to brighten her exile. Besides, there was another consideration. If Awdrey were to hear of it, she would at once begin to weave one of her silly romances--make out Mr. Smith was in love. Ugh! Tony's shoulders shrugged high in disdain. It would be quite easy to give an account of her afternoon which did not include her adventure. She would tell how her tyre had punctured, how she had tried in vain to mend it, and had at last come home on foot. Her concealment did not afflict her, as she had at first imagined. On the contrary, it gave her a strange, new feeling of importance and independence. For the first time a certain warmth and colour crept into her thoughts, a certain pride invaded the shy dignity of her step. That night she dreamed that she had gone to meet Mr. Smith at Brambletye. She saw the two capped turrets against a background of shimmering light. Mr. Smith took her hand and looked into her eyes in that strange, troubled way which called up as before an answering pain. He said something she could not remember when she woke. Then suddenly a dark shape seemed to rush between them and whirl them apart. She cried out, and Mr. Smith seemed to be answering her from a great distance: "Don't be frightened--it's only Furlonger--it's only Furlonger." But the fear grew upon her, the darkness wrapt her round, and, struggling in the darkness, she awoke. All that day she wondered if she would meet him. She prowled round Shovelstrode with her dog, ignoring an invitation from Awdrey to "come for a stroll, and hear the latest about Captain le Bourbourg." She was used to being alone during her holidays. It was her habit to walk with Prince in the little twisting lanes round her home. She never went far, but she used to spend long hours in the fields, gathering wild flowers and leaves for her collection, or making Prince go racing in the grass. A rather forlorn little figure, she had gone through the days unconscious of her forlornness. But to-day she felt it--because she was expecting some one who did not come. She did not meet him in any of those thick-rutted lanes, nor in Swites Wood, nor on the borders of Holtye Common where she went for blackberries. She began to wonder if he would ever come, or if her glimpse of a world beyond the strait boundaries of her life had been but a flash--a sudden haze of gold in the ruins of Brambletye. She felt her loneliness, the blank of having no one to speak to about school, the strange tickling interest of confidences outside her experience. That night as she knelt by the bed and watched the moon behind the pines, she added to her prayers a stiff petition that she might "meet Mr. Smith again."