The schoolmaster was not deceived by her evasion. There had come a gravity into her manner, and a womanliness into her face, in a degree more than natural at her years. "Let us talk of you for a change," said she. "Well, and what shall we say?" asked Giraud, and a constraint fell upon them both. "We must forget those fine plans," he continued at length. "Is it not so? I think I have learnt that too from you." "I hare said nothing," she interrupted quickly. "Precisely," said he, with a smile. "The school at Roquebrune will send no Deputy to Paris." "Oh! why not?" said Pamela, but there was no conviction in her voice. Giraud was not of the stern stuff "To break his birth's invidious bar." He had longings, but there was the end. "At all events," she said, turning to him with a great earnestness, "we shall be friends always, whatever happens." The words were the death-knell to the schoolmaster's aspirations. They conveyed so much more than was actually said. He took them bravely enough. "That is a good thing," he said in all sincerity. "If I stay here all my life, I shall still have the memory of the years when I taught you history. I shall know, though I do not see you, that we are friends. It is a great thing for me." "For me, too," said Pamela, looking straight into his eyes, and she meant her words no less than he had meant his. Yet to both they had the sound of a farewell. And in a way they were. They were the farewell to the afternoons upon the terrace, they closed the door upon their house of dreams. Giraud leaned that evening over the parapet in the little square of Roquebrune. The Mediterranean lay dark and quiet far below, the terrace of Monte Carlo glowed, and the red signal-lamps pointed out the way to Paris. But he was no longer thinking of his fallen plans. He was thinking of the girl up there in the villa who had been struck by some blind blow of Destiny, who had grown a woman before her time. It was a pity, it was a loss in the general sum of things which make for joy. He had of course only his suspicions to go upon. But they were soon strengthened. For Pamela fell into ill-health, and the period of ill-health lasted all that winter. After those two years had passed, she disappeared for a while altogether out of Giraud's sight. She came no more to the Villa Pontignard, but stayed with her father and her horses at her home in Leicestershire. Her mother came alone to Roquebrune. CHAPTER II PAMELA LOOKS ON