But Lancelot was not to escape. Instead of moving on, as he had hoped, the party stood looking over the bridge, and talking--he took for granted, poor thin-skinned fellow--of him. And for once his suspicions were right; for he overheard Argemone say-- 'I wonder how Mr. Smith can be so rude as to sit there in my presence over his stupid perch! Smoking those horrid cigars, too! How selfish those field-sports do make men!' 'Thank you!' said the colonel, with a low bow. Lancelot rose. 'If a country girl, now, had spoken in that tone,' said he to himself, 'it would have been called at least "saucy"--but Mammon's elect ones may do anything. Well--here I come, limping to my new tyrant's feet, like Goethe's bear to Lili's.' She drew him away, as women only know how, from the rest of the party, who were chatting and laughing with Claude. She had shown off her fancied indifference to Lancelot before them, and now began in a softer voice-- 'Why will you be so shy and lonely, Mr. Smith?' 'Because I am not fit for your society.' 'Who tells you so? Why will you not become so?' Lancelot hung down his head. 'As long as fish and game are your only society, you will become more and more morne and self-absorbed.' 'Really fish were the last things of which I was thinking when you came. My whole heart was filled with the beauty of nature, and nothing else.' There was an opening for one of Argemone's preconcerted orations. 'Had you no better occupation,' she said gently, 'than nature, the first day of returning to the open air after so frightful and dangerous an accident? Were there no thanks due to One above?' Lancelot understood her. 'How do you know that I was not even then showing my thankfulness?' 'What! with a cigar and a fishing-rod?' 'Certainly. Why not?' Argemone really could not tell at the moment. The answer upset her scheme entirely. 'Might not that very admiration of nature have been an act of worship?' continued our hero. 'How can we better glorify the worker than by delighting in his work?' 'Ah!' sighed the lady, 'why trust to these self-willed methods, and neglect the noble and exquisite forms which the Church has prepared for us as embodiments for every feeling of our hearts?' 'EVERY feeling, Miss Lavington?' Argemone hesitated. She had made the good old stock assertion, as in duty bound; but she could not help recollecting that there were several Popish books of devotion at that moment on her table, which seemed to her to patch a gap or two in the Prayer-book.