“Yes, I do love them in a sense,” she said, “but you must remember that I, too, was educated in a Latin country. So, you see, we four are all outsiders and heretics! I fancy your brother, Mr. Andersen, is an ingrained Neviltonian.” James smiled in a kindly, almost paternal manner, at the little descendant of the Tudor courtiers. Her sweetness and artless goodness made him feel ashamed of his furtive truculence. “I wish you would come in and see my mother and me, one of these evenings,” said Vennie, looking rather wistfully at Lacrima and putting a more tender solicitation into her tone than the mere words implied. Lacrima hesitated. “I am afraid I cannot promise,” she said nervously. “My cousin generally wants me in the evening.” “Perhaps,” put in Mr. Taxater, with his most Talleyrand-like air, “a similar occasion to the present one may arise again, when with Mr. Andersen’s permission, we may all adjourn to the vicarage garden.” Lacrima, rather uncomfortably, looked down at the grass. “We four, being, as we have admitted, all outsiders here,” went on the diplomatist, “ought to have no secrets from one another. I think”--he looked at Vennie--“we may just as well confess to our friends that we quite realize the little--charming--‘friendship,’ shall I say?--that has sprung up between this gentleman’s brother and Miss Romer.” “I think,” said James Andersen hurriedly, in order to relieve Lacrima’s embarrassment, “I think the real bond between Luke and Miss Gladys is their mutual pleasure in all this luxuriant scenery. Somehow I feel as if you, Sir, and Miss Seldom, were quite separate from it and outside it.” “Yes,” cried Vennie eagerly, “and Lacrima is outside it, because she is half-Italian, and you are outside it because you are half-Spanish.” “It is clear, then,” said Mr. Taxater, “that we four must form a sort of secret alliance, an alliance based upon the fact that even Miss Seldom’s lovely orchards do not altogether make us forget what civilization means!” Neither of the two girls seemed quite to understand what the theologian implied, but Andersen shot at him a gleam of appreciative gratitude. “I was telling Miss Traffio,” he said, “that under this grass, not very many feet down, a remarkable layer of sandstone obtrudes itself.”