‘Yes, my dear,’ said her guardian, passing his hand over his face; ’no doubt my mind is in the condition you suggest.  I am probably enchanted; which does not help me to guard you from falling into the same awkward condition.  But, Miss Hazel, I have engaged a new groom for you.  I desire that you will take him with you instead of Dingee.  Dingee is no more than a monkey.’

It fell out, however, that Miss Kennedy in the next few days refused several ‘escorts,’ on her own responsibility; saying nothing about Jeannie Deans.  Instead whereof, she went off in the early morning hours and had delightful long trots by herself, with only the new groom; who, she did not happen to remark, developed a remarkable familiarity with the new horse.  Threading her way among the beautiful woods of Chickaree, wherever a bridle-path offered, and sure to be at home long before Mr. Falkirk’s arrival to breakfast, so that he knew nothing whatever about the matter.  Just why this course of action was in favour, perhaps the young lady herself could scarcely have told, had she tried; but she did not try.  Whether other associations would break the harmony of some already well established; whether she feared people’s questions about her horse; whether she liked the wild, irregular roaming through the forest

’ ’ith no one nigh to hender’—­

as Lowell has it.  This last was undeniably true.

Meantime Mr. Rollo himself was away again—­gone for a few days at first, and then by business kept on and on; and it suddenly flashed into Wych Hazel’s mind one day, that now, before he got home, was the very time to go and have a good long talk with Primrose and her father.  Nobody there to come in even at dinner time but Dr. Arthur; and him Wych Hazel liked so much and minded so little, that Dr. Arthur was in some danger of minding it a good deal.  She would go early and ride Jeannie Deans, and get home before the crowd of loungers got out for their afternoon’s play.  At most it was but a little way from Dr. Maryland’s to the edge of her own woods; not more than three miles perhaps; four to the gate.

Primrose was overjoyed to see her.

‘What does make your visits so few and far between?’ she cried as her hand came to lift off Wych Hazel’s hat.

‘Well,—­what does make yours?’ said Hazel, gaily.  ’I am come for a little talk with you, and a lecture from Dr. Maryland, and any other nice thing I can find.’

’Then we shall keep you to dinner, and I’ll have your horse put up.  I do not see so much of you, Hazel, as I hoped I should when you came.  You are such a gay lady.’

It was difficult to deny this.  However, the talk ran on to other pleasanter topics, and was enjoyed by both parties for about half an hour.  Then came a hindrance in the shape of a lady wearing the very face that had bowed to Wych Hazel so impressively from the carriage in Morton Hollow.  The very same! the long pale features, the bandeaux of lustreless pale hair enclosing them, and two of those lustreless eyes which look as if they had not depth enough to be blue; eyes which give, and often appropriately, the feeling of shallowness in the character.  But now and then a shallow lake of water has a pit of awful depth somewhere.