It seemed as if it really was the case.  Vrouw Snieder stood clapping her hands and beckoning to them, and the coachman appeared impatient to be off.  With reluctance, and many times repeated regrets, they collected their wraps and baskets, and got into the carriage.

“Good-bye, beautiful wood, good-bye!” Denah said, leaning far out as they started.  “Oh, if one could but remain here till the moon rose!”

“It would be very damp,” her mother observed.  “The dew would fall.”

To which incontestable remark Denah made no reply.

The return journey was much like the drive there, with one exception; they passed one object of interest they had not seen before.  It was when they were nearing the outskirts of the town that Anna exclaimed, “An Englishman!  Look, look, Miss Julia, a compatriot of yours!”

The season was full early for tourists, and at no time did the place attract many.  Englishmen who came now probably came on business which was unlikely to bring them out to these quiet, flat fields.  But Anna and Denah, who joined her in a much more demonstrative look-out than Marbridge would have considered well-bred, were insistent on the nationality.

“He walks like an Englishman,” Anna said, “as if all the world belonged to him.”

“And looks like one,” Denah added; “he has no moustache, and wears a glass in his eye, look, Miss Julia.”

Julia looked, then drew back rather quickly.  They were right, it was an Englishman; it was of all men Rawson-Clew.

What was he doing here?  By what extraordinary chance he came to be in this unlikely place she could not think.  She was very glad that Mevrouw felt the air chilly, and so had had the leather flaps pulled over part of the open sides of the carriage; this and the eager sisters screened her so well that it was unlikely he could see her.

“Is he not an Englishman?” Anna asked.

“Yes,” she answered; “one could not mistake him for anything else.”

“I wonder if he recognised you as a country-woman,” Anna speculated; and Julia said she did not consider herself typically English in appearance.

The sisters talked for the rest of the way of the Englishman; of his air and bearing, and the fact, of which they declared themselves convinced, that he was a person of distinction.

But it was not till the drive was over, and the party had separated, that Denah was able to say what was burning on her tongue.  They had left the clerk’s children at their house, said good-bye to Vrouw Van Heigen and Julia, and were within their own home at last; the girls went up to their bedroom, and Denah carefully fastened the door, then she said mysteriously, “Miss Julia knows that Englishman.”

Anna jumped at the intelligence, and still more at the tone.  “Did she tell you?” she asked.

“No,” Denah replied with some scorn; “she would not tell any one, she wishes it concealed; she thinks it is so, but I saw it.”