Then she began to sing.  Eugene looked up.

“Is it you, Lady Claudia?”

“Yes.  Why are you moping here?”

“Where’s Stafford?”

“Everybody,” said Claudia impatiently, throwing her hat, and herself after it, on a lounge, “asks me where Father Stafford is.  I don’t know, Mr. Lane; and what’s more, at this moment I don’t care.  Have you nothing better than that to say to me when I come to look for you?”

Eugene pulled himself together.  Tragedy airs would be insufferable.

“True, most beauteous damsel!” he said.  “I am remiss.  For the purposes of the moment, hang Stafford!  What shall we do?”

She got up and came close to him.

“Mr. Lane,” she whispered, “what do you think there is in the stable?”

“I know what there isn’t:  that’s a horse fit to ride.”

“A libel! a libel!  But there is [in a still lower whisper] a sociable.”

“A what?”

“A sociable.”

“Do you mean a tricycle?”

“Yes—­for two.”

“Oho!” said Eugene, gently chuckling.

“Wouldn’t it be fun?”

“On the road?”

“N—­no, perhaps not; round the park.”

“Hush!  S’death! if Kate saw us!  Where is she?”

“I saw her last with Mr. Haddington.”

“In the scheme of creation everything has its use,” replied Eugene tranquilly.  “Haddington supplies a felt want.”

“Be quiet.  But will you?”

“Yes; come along.  Be swift and silent.”

“I must go and put on an old frock.”

“All right; be quick.”

“What is the use?” Eugene pondered; “I can’t have her, and Stafford may as well—­if he will.  Will he, I wonder?  And would she?  Oh, Lord! what a nuisance they are!  By Jove!  I should like to see Kate’s face if she spots us.”

A few minutes later the strange and unedifying sight of Lady Claudia Territon and Mr. Lane, mounted on a very rickety old “sociable,” presented itself to the gaping gaze of several laborers in the park.  Claudia was in her most boisterous spirits; Eugene, by one of the quick transitions of his nature, was hardly less elate.  Up-hill they toiled and down-hill they raced, getting, as the manner of “cyclists” is, very warm and rather oily.  But retribution lagged not.  Down a steep hill they came, round a sharp turn they went, and, alas, over into a ditch they fell.  This was bad enough, but in the calm seclusion of a garden seat, perched on a knoll just above them, the sinners, as they rose, dirty but unhurt, beheld Miss Bernard!  For a moment all was consternation.  What would she say?

It was a curious thing, but Kate seemed as embarrassed as themselves, and she said nothing except: 

“Oh, I hope you’re not hurt!” and said this in a hasty way and with ostentatious amiability.

Eugene was surprised.  But as his eyes wandered, they fell on Haddington, and that rising politician held awkwardly in his hand, and was trying to convey behind his back, what looked very like a lady’s glove.  Now Miss Bernard had only one glove on.