“You don’t even except Frank?” I mumbled.  I could not resist the opportunity she had offered to ask that too pointed question; but I looked down at the floor as I spoke; I wanted her to understand that I was not cross-examining her.

“I knew you saw us,” she returned in the same even tone that she had used all through this conversation of ours.  She had not once raised or lowered her voice.  She might have been speaking a part, just to test her memory.

“Yes, I did,” I said.  “Quite by accident, of course.  I had no idea that he had come up here.  I hadn’t seen him since breakfast.”

“It was a mistake,” she said simply.

I looked up at her, hoping with no shadow of reason that I might have played some part in her discovery that that caress in the wood had been a mistake.  But she had not changed colour nor moved her attitude, and her voice was still free from any emotion as she said,—­

“We thought, Brenda and I thought, that we might trick him.  It was a piece of chicane.  She and I were rather silly this morning.  We excite each other.  In a sort of way she dared me.  But I was sorry afterwards and so was Brenda, although she thought it might be better as I’d gone so far to keep it up until Arthur had got a promise or something out of Mr. Jervaise.  I had meant to do that.  I don’t know why I didn’t.”

“But do you think that Frank Jervaise realises that you were only playing with him for your own ends, this morning?” I asked.

“Oh! yes,” she said with perfect assurance.  “As a matter of fact, he was very suspicious this morning.  He’s like his mother and sister in suspecting everybody.”

“Do you think he’ll make trouble?” I said.  “Now?  Up at the Hall?”

“Yes, I do.  He’s vindictive,” she replied.  “That’s one reason why I’m glad you are with us, now.  It might help—­though I don’t quite see how.  Perhaps it’s just the feeling of having some one else on our side.  Because I’m afraid that there’s going to be a lot of trouble when my father and mother come home.  With my father, more particularly.  He’ll be afraid of being turned out.  It will be very difficult to make him take up a new idea.  He’ll hate the thought of leaving here and starting all over again in Canada.  He loves this place so.”

“And I suppose he likes, or at least respects, the Jervaises?” I said.

“Not much,” she replied.  “They’ve made it very difficult for us in many ways.”

“Deliberately?” I suggested.

“They don’t care,” she said, warming a little for the first time.  “They simply don’t think of any one but themselves.  For instance, it mayn’t seem much to you, but it’s part of our agreement with Mr. Jervaise to provide the Hall with dairy when they’re at home—­at market prices, of course.  And then they’ll go to town for two or three months in the summer and take a lot of the servants with them, and we’re left to find a market for our dairy as best we can, just when milk is most plentiful.”  She lifted her hands for a moment in a graceful French gesture as she added, “Often it means just giving milk away.”