He said “Thank you,” but not so earnestly as his previous appeal might have suggested, and with the same awkward abstraction in his eyes.  Miss Trotter did not notice it, as her own eyes were at that moment fixed upon a point on the trail a few rods away.  “Look,” she said in a lower voice, “I may have the opportunity now for there is Frida herself passing.”  Chris turned in the direction of her glance.  It was indeed the young girl walking leisurely ahead of them.  There was no mistaking the smart pink calico gown in which Frida was wont to array her rather generous figure, nor the long yellow braids that hung Marguerite-wise down her back.  With the consciousness of good looks which she always carried, there was, in spite of her affected ease, a slight furtiveness in the occasional swift turn of her head, as if evading or seeking observation.

“I will overtake her and speak to her now,” continued Miss Trotter.  “I may not have so good a chance again to see her alone.  You can wait here for my return, if you like.”

Chris started out of his abstraction.  “Stay!” he stammered, with a faint, tentative smile.  “Perhaps—­don’t you think?—­I had better go first and tell her you want to see her.  I can send her here.  You see, she might”—­He stopped.

Miss Trotter smiled.  “It was part of your promise, you know, that you were not to see her again until I had spoken.  But no matter!  Have it as you wish.  I will wait here.  Only be quick.  She has just gone into the grove.”

Without another word the young man turned away, and she presently saw him walking toward the pine grove into which Frida had disappeared.  Then she cleared a space among the matted moss and chickweed, and, gathering her skirts about her, sat down to wait.  The unwonted attitude, the whole situation, and the part that she seemed destined to take in this sentimental comedy affected her like some quaint child’s play out of her lost youth, and she smiled, albeit with a little heightening of color and lively brightening of her eyes.  Indeed, as she sat there listlessly probing the roots of the mosses with the point of her parasol, the casual passer-by might have taken herself for the heroine of some love tryst.  She had a faint consciousness of this as she glanced to the right and left, wondering what any one from the hotel who saw her would think of her sylvan rendezvous; and as the recollection of Chris kissing her hand suddenly came back to her, her smile became a nervous laugh, and she found herself actually blushing!

But she was recalled to herself as suddenly.  Chris was returning.  He was walking directly towards her with slow, determined steps, quite different from his previous nervous agitation, and as he drew nearer she saw with some concern an equally strange change in his appearance:  his colorful face was pale, his eyes fixed, and he looked ten years older.  She rose quickly.