“I am perfectly willing to afford Monsieur Chauvenet all imaginable entertainment.  We are bound to have many meetings.  I am afraid he reached this charming valley before me; but—­as a rule—­I prefer to be a little ahead of him; it’s a whim—­the merest whim, I assure you.”

He laughed, thinking little of what he said, but delighting in the picture she made, the tall pillars of the veranda framing her against the white wall of the house, and the architrave high above speaking, so he thought, for the amplitude, the breadth of her nature.  Her green cloth gown afforded the happiest possible contrast with the white background; and her hat—­(for a gown, let us remember, may express the dressmaker, but a hat expresses the woman who wears it)—­her hat, Armitage was aware, was a trifle of black velvet caught up at one side with snowy plumes well calculated to shock the sensibilities of the Audubon Society.  Yet the bird, if he knew, doubtless rejoiced in his fate!  Shirley’s hand, thrice laid down, and there you have the length of that velvet cap, plume and all.  Her profile, as she half turned away, must awaken regret that Reynolds and Gainsborough paint no more; yet let us be practical:  Sargent, in this particular, could not serve us ill.

Her annoyance at finding herself lingering to listen to him was marked in an almost imperceptible gathering of her brows.  It was all the matter of an instant.  His heart beat fast in his joy at the sight of her, and the tongue that years of practice had skilled in reserve and evasion was possessed by a reckless spirit.

She nodded carelessly, but said nothing, waiting for him to go on.

“But when I wait for people they always come—­even in a strange pergola!” he added daringly.  “Now, in Geneva, not long ago—­”

He lost the profile and gained her face as he liked it best, though her head was lifted a little high in resentment against her own yielding curiosity.  He was speaking rapidly, and the slight hint of some other tongue than his usually fluent English arrested her ear now, as it had at other times.

“In Geneva, when I told a young lady that I was waiting for a very wicked man to appear—­it was really the oddest thing in the world that almost immediately Monsieur Jules Chauvenet arrived at mine own inn!  It is inevitable; it is always sure to be my fate,” he concluded mournfully.

He bowed low, restored the shabby hat to his head with the least bit of a flourish and strolled away through the garden by a broad walk that led to the front gate.

He would have been interested to know that when he was out of sight Shirley walked to the veranda rail and bent forward, listening to his steps on the gravel, after the hedge and shrubbery had hidden him.  And she stood thus until the faint click of the gate told her that he had gone.

She did not know that as the gate closed upon him he met Chauvenet face to face.