He made a gallant figure there on his stone terrace.  The girl’s eyes shone a little, but they turned almost immediately to the other man at her side.

“Beautiful, isn’t it, Dick?” she said.

He met her look, and she was conscious of a chill.  She had never seen him look so aloof, so cynical.  “A temple of delight!” he said.

His manner offended her.  She turned deliberately away from him.  And again Lord Saltash chuckled, as though at some secret joke.

They entered by a narrow door at the head of a flight of steps.  “This at least is private,” declared Saltash, as he took a key from an inner pocket.

“Does no one ever come in here when you are away?” Juliet asked.

“Not by this entrance,” he said.  “There is another into the Castle itself which is known to a few.  It leads into the music room whence Mr. Green will be able to start upon his search.”

He threw a mischievous glance at Green who met it with a look so direct, and so unswerving that the odd eyes blinked and turned away.

But curiously a spirit of perversity seemed to have entered into Juliet.  She also looked at Dick.  “I wish you would go and find them,” she said.  “I know they will be wondering where we are.”

His brows went up.  She thought he was going to refuse.  And then quite suddenly he yielded.  “Certainly if you wish it!” he said.  “And when they are found?”

“Oh, dump them in the great hall!” said Saltash.  “To be left till called for!”

“Charles!” protested Juliet.

He grinned at her—­a wicked, monkeyish grin, and threw open the door, disclosing a steep and winding stone stair.

“Will you be pleased to enter!” he said, in the tone of one issuing a royal command.

But she hung for a moment, looking back with a strange wistfulness at the man she was leaving.  The imprisoned air came out into the hot sunshine like a cold vapour.  She shivered a little.

“Dick!” she said.

He stopped at the foot of the outside steps looking up at her.  His eyes were extremely bright, and something within her shrank from their straight regard.  It conveyed possession, dominance; almost it conveyed a menace.

“When you have found them, come and—­tell me!” she said.

He lifted his hat to her with punctilious courtesy, and turned away.  “I will,” he said.

“That’s a masterful sort of person,” observed Saltash, as they mounted the dimly-lit turret stair.  “What does he do for a living?”

Juliet hesitated, conscious of a strong repugnance to discuss her lover with this man from her old world whom, strangely, at that moment, she felt that she knew so infinitely better.  But she could not withhold an answer to so ordinary a question.  Moreover Saltash could be imperious when he chose, and she knew instinctively that it was not wise to cross him.

“By profession,” she said slowly at length, “he is—­a village schoolmaster.”