“By a most charming young lady,” said the vicar, smiling.

“By a very cool one,” said Robin, shrugging his shoulders, for he did not like being dismissed.

“Yes—­oddly self-possessed for her age,” agreed the vicar.

“I wonder if all German teacher’s nieces are like that,” said Robin with another laugh.

“Few can be so blest by nature, I imagine.”

“Oh, I don’t mean faces.  She is certainly prettier by a good bit than most girls.”

“She is quite unusually lovely, young man.  Don’t quibble.”

“Miss Schultz—­Ethel Schultz,” murmured Robin; adding under his breath, “Good Lord.”

“She can’t help her name.  These things are thrust upon one.”

“It’s a beastly common name.  Macgrigor, who was a year in Dresden, told me everybody in Germany is called Schultz.”

“Except those who are not.”

“Now, pater, you’re being clever again,” said Robin, smiling down at his father.

“Here comes some one in a hurry,” said the vicar, his attention arrested by the rapidly approaching figure of a man; and, looking up, Robin beheld Fritzing striding through the churchyard, his hat well down over his eyes as if clapped on with unusual vigour, both hands thrust deep in his pockets, the umbrella, without which he never, even on the fairest of days, went out, pressed close to his side under his arm, and his long legs taking short and profane cuts over graves and tombstones with the indifference to decency of one immersed in unpleasant thought.  It was not the custom in Symford to leap in this manner over its tombs; and Fritzing arriving at a point a few yards from the vicar, and being about to continue his headlong career across the remaining graves to the tree under which he had left Priscilla, the vicar raised his voice and exhorted him to keep to the path.

“Quaint-looking person,” remarked Robin.  “Another stranger.  I say, it can’t be—­no, it can’t possibly be the uncle?” For he saw he was a foreigner, yet on the other hand never was there an uncle and a niece who had less of family likeness.

Fritzing was the last man wilfully to break local rules or wound susceptibilities; and pulled out of his unpleasant abstraction by the vicar’s voice he immediately desisted from continuing his short cut, and coming onto the path removed his hat and apologized with the politeness that was always his so long as nobody was annoying him.

“My name is Neumann, sir,” he said, introducing himself after the German fashion, “and I sincerely beg your pardon.  I was looking for a lady, and”—­he gave his spectacles a little adjusting shove as though they were in fault, and gazing across to the elm where he had left Priscilla sitting added with sudden anxiety—­“I fear I do not see her.”

“Do you mean Miss Schultz?” asked the vicar, looking puzzled.

“No, sir, I do not mean Miss Schultz,” said Fritzing, peering about him at all the other trees in evident surprise and distress.