Rawson-Clew agreed with her.  “I am rather surprised that you came out at all this evening,” he remarked.  “I should have thought your careful friends would have been afraid of colds and wet feet.”

“Vrouw Van Heigen was,” Julia answered, “but Denah and I were not.  It is the last opportunity we shall have for a little while; Joost goes to Germany on business to-morrow.”

Rawson-Clew laughed.  “Which means, I suppose,” he said, “that she will neglect the crochet work, and you will have to superintend it?  Not very congenial to you, is it?”

“Good discipline,” she told him.

“And for that reason to be welcomed?  Really you deserve to succeed in whatever it is you are attempting; you do not neglect details.”

“Details are often important,” she said; “stopping at home and doing crochet work while Joost is in Germany, for instance, may help me a good deal.”

The tone struck Rawson-Clew as implying more than the words said, but he did not ask for an interpretation, and before long she had put a question to him.  They were nearing a large house that stood far back from the road on the left hand side.  It was a big block of a place, greyish-white in colour, and with more than half of its windows bricked up, indescribably gloomy.  A long, straight piece of water lay before it, stretching almost from the walls to the road, from which it was separated by a low fence.  Tall, thick trees grew in a close row on either side, narrowing the prospect; a path ran up beside them on the one hand, the only way to the house, but in the steamy mist which lay thick over everything this evening one could hardly see it, and it looked as if the place were unapproachable from the front.

Julia glanced curiously towards the house; it was the only one of any size or possible interest in the village; the only one, she had decided some time ago, that Rawson-Clew could have any reason to visit.

As they approached the gate she ventured, “You go here, do you not?”

“Yes,” he answered; “to Herr Van de Greutz.”

“The cousin tells me he is a great chemist,” Julia said.

“He is,” Rawson-Clew agreed, “and one much absorbed in his work; it is impossible to see him even on business except in the evening.”

He paused by the gate as he spoke.  “You have not much further to go, have you?” he said.  “Will you excuse me carrying your basket further?  I am afraid I am rather behind my time.”

Julia took the basket, assuring him she had no distance to carry it, but her eyes as she said it twinkled with amusement; it was not really late, and she knew it.

“You are afraid of what will be said next,” she thought as she looked back at the man, who was already vanishing among the mists by the lake.  And the thought pleased her somewhat, for it suggested that Rawson-Clew had a respect for her acumen, and also that her private fancy—­that the business which brought him here was not of a kind for public discussion—­was correct.