Through the green walls went Armitage.  He had not been out of the Baron’s grounds before since he was carried thence from the bungalow; and it was pleasant to be free once more, and able to stir without a nurse at his heels; and he swung along with his head and shoulders erect, walking with the confident stride of a man who has no doubt whatever of his immediate aim.

At the pergola he paused to reconnoiter, finding on the bench certain vestigia that interested him deeply,—­a pink parasol, a contrivance of straw, lace and pink roses that seemed to be a hat, and a June magazine.  He jumped upon the bench where once he had sat, an exile, a refugee, a person discussed in disagreeable terms by the newspapers, and studied the landscape.  Then he went on up the gradual slope of the meadow, until he came to the pasture wall.  It was under the trees beneath which Oscar had waited for Zmai that he found her.

“They told me you wouldn’t dare venture out for a week,” she said, advancing toward him and giving him her hand.

“That was what they told me,” he said, laughing; “but I escaped from my keepers.”

“You will undoubtedly take cold,—­without your hat!”

“Yes; I shall undoubtedly have pneumonia from exposure to the Virginia sunshine.  I take my chances.”

“You may sit on the wall for three minutes; then you must go back.  I can not be responsible for the life of a wounded hero.”

“Please!” He held up his hand.  “That’s what I came to talk to you about.”

“About being a hero?  You have taken an unfair advantage.  I was going to send for the latest designs in laurel wreaths to-morrow.”

She sat down beside him on the wall.  The sheep were a grayish blur against the green.  A little negro boy was shepherding them, and they scampered before him toward the farther end of the pasture.  The faint and vanishing tinkle of a bell, and the boy’s whistle, gave emphasis to the country-quiet of the late afternoon.  They spoke rapidly and impersonally of his adventures in the hills and of his illness.  When they looked at each other it was with swift laughing glances.  Her cheeks and hands were-already brown,—­an honest brown won from May and June in the open field,—­not that blistered, peeling scarlet that marks the insincere devotee of racket, driver and oar, who jumps into the game in August, but the real brown conferred by the dear mother of us all upon the faithful who go forth to meet her in April.  Her hands interested him particularly.  They were long, slender and supple; and she had a pretty way of folding them upon her knees that charmed him.

“I didn’t know, Miss Claiborne, that I was going to lose my mind that morning at the bungalow or I should have asked your brother to conduct you to the conservatory while I fainted.  From what they told me I must have been a little light-headed for a day or two.  If I had been in my right mind I shouldn’t have let Captain Dick mix up in my business and run the risk of getting killed in a nasty little row.  Dear old Dick!  I made a mess of that whole business; I ought to have telegraphed for the Storm Springs constable in the beginning, and told him that if he wasn’t careful the noble house of Schomburg would totter and fall.”