The camera clicked unnoticed.  Quicker than a flash Charlotte had gone through a series of motions and had made a second exposure, smiling delightedly to herself.

“It’s a gentleman to see you,” called Miss Austin, softly, as the heavily built figure in the dust-coat opened the gate and advanced up the path.

Miss Ruston made all secure about her camera, and turned to meet the full and smiling gaze of the newcomer, standing, cap in hand, just behind her.  He was a man who might have been thirty or forty—­it would not have been easy for a stranger to tell which at first glance, for his fair hair was thick upon his head, his face fresh and unwrinkled, and his eyes bright.  Yet about him was an air of having been encountering men and things for a long time, and of understanding them pretty well.

“Mr. Brant!” Charlotte’s tone was that of complete surprise.

“You were not expecting me?” He shook hands, gazing at her in undisguised pleasure.  He was not much taller than she, and the afternoon sun was at his back, so he had the advantage.

“I certainly was not.  How does it happen?  A business journey?”

“A most luckily opportune one—­for me.  It brought me within a hundred miles, and my descriptions to my friend of an interesting region did the rest.”

His eyes swerved to the figure of Miss Edith Austin, standing tensely by the rosebush, an observer whose whole aspect denoted eager absorption in the meeting before her.  Charlotte presented him.  Miss Austin expressed herself as assured of his being a stranger to the town the moment her eyes fell upon him.

“And a very dusty and disreputable one, I’m afraid,” Mr. Brant declared.  “I should have stopped at some hotel and made myself presentable,” he explained to Charlotte, “if I had not been afraid I should lose a minute out of the short time Van Schoonhoven agrees to leave me here.”

Charlotte took him to the house and left him politely trying to converse with her grandmother—­at tremendous odds, for he was not a rival of Red Pepper Burns in his fondness for old ladies, not to mention deaf ones.  The photographer returned to her sitter.

“I have several pictures of you now, Miss Austin,” she said, “and I think among them we shall find one you will like.”

“But aren’t you going to have one of this last pose?” Miss Austin inquired, anxiously.  “Of course, I know you have company now—­”

“That doesn’t matter.  But I have two exposures, by the rosebush, and I think they are both good.  I have kept you standing for quite a long time, and I want you to see proofs of these before we try any more.”

“I haven’t once known when you were taking me.  I can’t help feeling that if you just let me know when you were going to take the picture I could be better prepared.”

“One can be a bit too much prepared.  The best one I ever had made of me was done an instant after I had carelessly taken a seat where the operator requested.  I looked up and asked, ‘How do you want me to sit?’ He answered, ‘Just as pleases you.  I have already taken the picture.’”