“‘I don’t know.  She’s been cool enough to drive him away,’ said that ’ere Miss Staggles.

“’But if he leaves disgraced, proved to be a villain, a deceiver, a blackleg, or worse than that, while I show up as an angel of light?’

“‘I don’t know,’ she says.  ’You are a wonderful man; you can do almost anything.  You could charm even an angel.’

“‘Well, you’ll do your best for me, won’t you?’ says he.

“‘You know I will,’ she says; ’but we must not be seen together like this, or they will suspect something.’

“‘True,’ says he, ‘but I want to know how things are goin’ on.’  Then he stopped a minit, and a thought seemed to strike him.  ’Miss Staggles, my friend,’ he says, ’watch her closely, and meet me here on New Year’s Day, at five o’clock in the evening.  It’s dark then, and everybody will be indoors.’”

“Then, yer honour, they went away together, and I was on the look-out for you all day yesterday.”

There was much in Simon’s story to think about, and for a time all was mystery to me.  One thing, however, I thought was clear.  He had either found he could do no good by his mesmeric influences, or else he had lost them, and so he was working up some other scheme against me.  I pondered long over the words, “If he leaves disgraced, proved to be a villain, a deceiver, a blackleg, or worse than that, while I show up as an angel of light?” Surely that meant a great deal!  I must be on the watch.  I must be as cunning as he.  I did not like eavesdropping or playing the spy, and yet I felt there were times when it would be right to do so, and surely that time had come in my history.  There was villainy to be unmasked, there was a true, innocent girl to be saved, while my reputation, happiness, and perhaps life were in danger.  I determined I would meet stratagem with stratagem.  I would hear this conference in the wood that evening.  I would seek to undeceive Miss Forrest, too, whose behaviour was now explained.  Accordingly, after a few more words with Simon, I wended my way back to the house again.

I found Miss Forrest still in the library, together with Tom Temple and Edith Gray.  All three looked up brightly at my entrance.

“We were just talking about you, Justin,” said Tom, as I joined them.  “I had been telling these ladies what a terrible woman-avoider you have always been.  Miss Forrest wouldn’t believe me at first; but that story of your walking five miles alone, rather than ride in a carriage with some ladies, has convinced her.  I thought you had improved the first day or so after you came, but you seem to have fallen back into your old ways.”

“Don’t put the fault on me, Tom,” I said.

“The fault has generally been with the ladies.  The truth is, I’m not a ladies’ man, and hence not liked by them.  I have generally been put down as a kind of bore, I expect, and I’ve never taken the trouble to improve my reputation.”