‘I cannot say the same of you, Sir George,’ she answered.  ’When you came out, and before you saw me, your face was as long as a coach-horse’s.’

Sir George winced.  He knew where his thoughts had been.  ’That was before I saw you, child,’ he said.  ‘In your company—­’

‘You are scarcely more lively,’ she answered saucily.  ’Do you flatter yourself that you are?’

Sir George was astonished.  He was aware that the girl lacked neither wit nor quickness; but hitherto he had found her passionate at one time, difficult and farouche at another, at no time playful or coquettish.  Here, and this morning, she did not seem to be the same woman.  She spoke with ease, laughed with the heart as well as the lips, met his eyes with freedom and without embarrassment, countered his sallies with sportiveness—­in a word, carried herself towards him as though she were an equal; precisely as Lady Betty and the Honourable Fanny carried themselves.  He stared at her.

And she, seeing the look, laughed in pure happiness, knowing what was in his mind, and knowing her own mind very well.  ‘I puzzle you?’ she said.

‘You do,’ he answered.  ’What are you doing here?  And why have you taken up with that lawyer?  And why are you dressed, child—­’

‘Like this?’ she said, rising, and sitting down again.  ’You think it is above my station?’

He shrugged his shoulders, declining to put his views into words; instead, ‘What does it all mean?’ he said.

‘What do you suppose?’ she asked, averting her eyes for the first time.

‘Well, of course—­you may be here to meet Dunborough,’ he answered bluntly.  ‘His mother seems to think that he is going to marry you.’

‘And what do you think, sir?’

‘I?’ said Sir George, reverting to the easy, half-insolent tone she hated.  And he tapped his Paris snuff-box and spoke with tantalising slowness.  ’Well, if that be the case, I should advise you to see that Mr. Dunborough’s surplice—­covers a parson.’

She sat still and silent for a full half-minute after he had spoken.  Then she rose without a word, and without looking at him; and, walking away to the farther end of the bridge, sat down there with her shoulder turned to him.

Soane felt himself rebuffed, and for a moment let his anger get the better of him.  ‘D—­n the girl, I only spoke for her own good!’ he muttered; then reflecting that if he followed her she might remove again and make him ridiculous, he rose to go into the house.  But apparently that was not what she wished.  He was scarcely on his legs before she turned her head, saw that he was going, and imperiously beckoned to him.