for Chaldea to ask her jealous heart where she had gone.  With the stealth and cunning of a Red Indian, the gypsy took up the trail, and saw the woman she followed enter the cottage.  For a single moment she had it in her mind to run to the camp and bring Pine, but reflecting that in a moment of rage the man might kill Lambert, Chaldea checked her first impulse, and bent all her energies towards getting sufficiently near to listen to a conversation which was not meant for her ears.

Meanwhile, Agnes had been admitted by Mrs. Tribb, a dried-up little woman with the rosy face of a winter apple, and a continual smile of satisfaction with herself and with her limited world.  This consisted of the cottage, in the wood, and of the near villages, where she repaired on occasions to buy food.  Sometimes, indeed, she went to The Manor, for, born and bred on the Garvington estates, Mrs. Tribb knew all the servants at the big house.  She had married a gamekeeper, who had died, and unwilling to leave the country she knew best, had gladly accepted the offer of Lord Garvington to look after the woodland cottage.  In this way Lambert became possessed of an exceedingly clean housekeeper, and a wonderfully good cook.  In fact so excellent a cook was Mrs. Tribb, that Garvington had frequently suggested she should come to The Manor.  But, so far, Lambert had managed to keep the little woman to himself.  Mrs. Tribb adored him, since she had known him from babyhood, and declined to leave him under any circumstances.  She thought Lambert the best man in the world, and challenged the universe to find another so handsome and clever, and so considerate.

“Dear me, my lady, is it yourself?” said Mrs. Tribb, throwing up her dry little hands and dropping a dignified curtsey.  “Well, I do call it good of you to come and see Master Noel.  He don’t go out enough, and don’t take enough interest in his stomach, if your ladyship will pardon my mentioning that part of him.  But you don’t know, my lady, what it is to be a cook, and to see the dishes get cold, while he as should eat them goes on painting, not but what Master Noel don’t paint like an angel, as I’ve said dozens of times.”

While Mrs. Tribb ran on in this manner her lively black eyes twinkled anxiously.  She knew that her master and Lady Agnes had been, as she said herself, “next door to engaged,” and knew also that Lambert was fretting over the match which had been brought about for the glorification of the family.  The housekeeper, therefore, wondered why Lady Agnes had come, and asked herself whether it would not be wise to say that Master Noel—­from old associations, she always called Lambert by this juvenile title—­was not at home.  But she banished the thought as unworthy, the moment it entered her active brain, and with another curtsey in response to the visitor’s greeting, she conducted her to the studio.  “Them two angels will never do no wrong, anyhow,” was Mrs. Tribb’s reflection, as she closed the door and left the pair together.  “But I do hope as that black-faced husband won’t ever learn.  He’s as jealous as Cain, and I don’t want Master Noel to be no Abel!”