For a long while, that is.  Presently chimed in with the music of chisel and mallet the ring of eager young footsteps outside, young men’s footsteps, voices and dear English speech.  One was freely translating from his guide-book:  “The cathedral, many times destroyed, was rebuilt after the fire of 1106, and not completed until the eighteenth century.  It is therefore of several styles.  The length is one hundred and two metres and the height twenty-three metres from floor to vault.”

Bessie’s breath came and went very fast; so did the blood in her cheeks.  Surely that voice she knew.  It was Harry Musgrave’s voice, and this was why thoughts of the Forest had haunted her all the morning.

The owner of the voice entered, and it was Harry Musgrave—­he and two others, all with the fresh air of British tourists not long started on their tour, knapsack on back and walking-stick in hand.  They pulled off their gray wideawakes and stared about, lowering their manly tones as they talked; stood a few minutes considering the length, breadth, height, and beauty of general effect in the nave and the choir, and then descended the steps, and in the true national spirit of inquiry walked straight to the stream of sunshine that revealed a door opening into some place unseen.  Bessie, sitting in retired shade, escaped their observation.  She laughed to herself with an inexpressible gladness.  It was certainly not by accident that Harry was here.  She would have liked to slip along the aisle in his shadow, to have called him by his name, but the presence of his two unknown companions, and some diffidence in herself, restrained her until the opportunity was gone, and he disappeared, inveigled by the sacristan into making the regular tour of the building.  She knew every word he would hear, every antiquity he would admire.  She saw him in the choir turning over the splendid manuscript books of Holy Writ and of the Mass which were in use in the church when the kings of England were still dukes of Normandy; saw him carried off into the crypt where is shown the pyx of those long-ago times, a curious specimen of mediaeval work in brass; and after that she lost him.

Would they climb the dome, those enterprising young men?  Bessie took it for granted that they would.  But she must see dear Harry again; and oh for a word with him!  Perhaps he would seek her out—­he might have learnt from her mother where she was at Bayeux—­or perhaps he would not dare?  Not that Harry’s character had ever lacked daring where his wishes were concerned; still, recollecting the trouble that had come of his former unauthorized visit, he might deny himself for her sake.  It was not probable, and Bessie would not have bidden him deny himself; she would willingly go through the same trouble again for the same treat.  Why had she not taken courage to arrest his progress?  How foolish, how heartless it would appear to-morrow if the chance were not renewed to her to-day!  She would not have done so silly a thing three years ago—­her impulse to follow him, to call out his name, would have been irresistible—­but now she felt shy of him.  A plague on her shyness!