Naturally when one is watched one colours up. Who could help it? The Honourable Jim said rather more loudly: "I'll tell you something. You have every symptom about you of a girl who has had a proposal of marriage in the last couple of days. Didn't I see it at lunch? The way you held your head! The new pride in your voice! Something in the very movement of the hand----" He caught me very gently by the wrist of my left hand as he spoke. I hadn't yet put on my gloves. "No ring there," said the Honourable Jim, dropping the hand again. "But--Miss Lovelace, child! Will you deny to me that some one has not proposed to you since you and I had tea together?" At that I could not help thinking of poor Mr. Brace in Paris. He would be coming over at the end of the week to receive the answer which I had not yet had time to think about. I was so amazed at Mr. Burke's perspicacity that I could not help reddening even deeper with pure surprise. The Irishman said softly: "I am answered! Tell me, when are you going over to the Stars and Stripes?" Good heavens! what an idiotic mistake. He really imagined that the man who had proposed to me was not Mr. Brace, but Mr. Hiram P. Jessop, of Chicago! I protested incoherently: "Why! I only met him last night." "What is time to love?" laughed Mr. Burke. "But don't be so ridiculous," I besought him. "This Mr. Jessop has nothing to do with me! He is----" Here the conversation was stopped by the entrance of Mr. Jessop himself. I think Mr. Hiram P. Jessop soon discovered that Mr. Burke had made up his mind about one thing. Namely, that he meant to start first from the inn where we'd lunched! He rose to say good-bye, and to add that he must be "off" so very firmly, and just after he had helped me to another plateful of raspberries drowned in cream. We shook hands, and in a few seconds we heard him starting his motor--or rather, the Super-car that I conclude he had borrowed, or "wangled," or whatever he calls it, from one of his many wealthy friends. Through the window I caught a flashing glimpse of this hedge-sparrow-blue car with her silver mascot whizzing past--on the road to Lewes. This was odd, I thought. For there was no doubt that when we pulled up at the inn, that car's nose had been towards home, and London. Then we, too, started off for Lewes, and the inquiries we had to make there. This was when I discovered that Mr. Jessop and I were, as I've said, "shadowed." Mr. Burke, in that gorgeous car of his, had evidently determined, for some obscure reason, not to lose sight of us. We overtook him, tooling leisurely along, a mile this side of Uckfield. We waved; we caught a cheery gleam of his white teeth and black-lashed blue eyes. I thought that would be the last of him. Oh, dear, no. A quarter of a mile further on he appeared to the right by some cross-road. And from then on he and the light-blue car kept appearing and disappearing in our field of vision.