She drew a little breath. “Thank you,” she said. “That’s frank and sensible. I’m always forgetting that France isn’t New York, or Paris for the matter of that, where one can do as one likes. I don’t know Provincial France a little bit, but I suppose, for red-hot gossip, it isn’t far behind a pretty little New England village. Still, can’t we get out of range, somehow, of the eyes? That road over there”—she waved a hand in the direction of the silent high-road, which Martin had lately travelled—“doesn’t seem to be encumbered with the scandal-mongers of Brantôme.” He laughed. “Will you try it?” She nodded assent. They set forth briskly. The glimpse into her nature delighted him. She appreciated at once the motive of his warning, but was serenely determined to have her own way. “We were just beginning an interesting little talk when you were called off,” she remarked. Martin felt himself grow red, remembering the tightly pocketed bagman who took the stage while he searched for eleemosynary sous. “My profession has its drawbacks,” said he. “So has every profession. I’ve got a friend in America—I have met him two or three times—who is conductor on the Twentieth Century Express between New York and Chicago. He’s by way of being an astronomer, and the great drawback of his profession is that he has no time to sit on top of a mountain and look at stars. The drawback of yours is that you can’t carry on pleasant conversations whenever you like. But the profession’s all right, unless you’re ashamed of it.” “But why should I be ashamed of it?” asked Martin. “I don’t know. Why should you? My father, who was the son of a New England parson——” “My father was a parson,” said Martin. “Was he? Well, that’s good. We both come of a God-fearing stock, which is something in these days. Anyway, my father, in order to get through college, waited on the men in Hall at Harvard, and was a summer waiter at a hotel in the Adirondacks. Of course there are some Americans who would like it to be thought that their ancestors brought over the family estates with them in the _Mayflower_. But we’re not like that. Say,” she said, after a few steps through the sweet keenness of the moonlit night. “Have you heard lately from Corinna?” He had not. In her last letter to him she had announced her departure from the constricting family circle of Wendlebury. She was going to London. “Where she would have a chance of self-development,” said Lucilla, with a laugh. “How did you know that?” Martin asked in simple surprise, for those had been almost Corinna’s own words. “What else would she go to London for?” “I don’t know,” said Martin. “She did not tell me.”