The next moment he had caught her up, and was laughing down merrily into her face. In spite of all that she knew and all that she guessed, Rhoda found it impossible to be as stiff and cold to him as she wished. How could she retain her belief that he was guilty of manslaughter, if not of actual murder, when he could laugh so merrily, and speak so light-heartedly, that she could scarcely believe the man of thirty to be more than a boy still? “I’ve been tearing after you for three fields and a half, and now I’m completely blown and can only pant!” he cried, with an affectation of laboured breathing which hardly interfered with his volubility. “I’ve been hanging about to escort you back to the Mill-house. I knew you’d take the short cut through the fields, and it’s hardly safe or pleasant for a young lady so late as this.” “Oh, I can take care of myself,” said Rhoda. She was rather dry of manner, and she would not even thank him, though his amiability made her feel ungracious. He assumed an appearance of intense dejection. “So you’re one of the strong-minded sisterhood,” he said dolefully. “Now I shouldn’t have thought it of you. It isn’t what one would have expected you to turn out, when I knew you first, ten years ago.” Rhoda was silent. She looked at him cautiously out of the corners of her eyes, and saw in his the anxiety she had expected to see. He wanted to “pump” her, she knew, concerning the extent of her information as to the doings of the night of the death of Langton. “You were as timid as a hare, a little shy girl with big eyes! But you were always nice to me then, much nicer than you are now. Why aren’t you as nice to me as you used to be?” “I don’t think I quite know what you mean by ‘nice,’” Rhoda answered. “There must be a difference, I suppose, between the manner of a girl of seventeen and that of a woman of twenty-seven.” “You haven’t taken a dislike to me for anything?” She could scarcely repress a shudder, but she answered hastily: “Of course not. Why should I?” “I fancied that you had though, without any reason,” persisted he. “I thought it rather ungrateful of you, because I was so awfully glad to meet you again.” “Thank you.” “Glad too, for Lady Sarah’s sake and Sir Robert’s, because they’re so pleased with your devotion to Caryl, and with the way you’ve dropped into the family interests.” To Rhoda’s great joy they had reached the high road, and she was able to escape him by getting on a tram-car which would take her into Dourville. He got in too, but there were other passengers inside, so that he had to make his conversation more general and less embarrassing. But she could not help fancying, when she got home and thought over their walk, that he had had something to say which he had had no opportunity of saying, and she resolved to do her best to avoid him for the future.