She met Edward Buxley and Freshfield Sumner at a cross-path, on their way to Brookfield; and then Adela joined the party, which soon embraced Mr. Barrett, and subsequently Cornelia.  All moved on in a humming leisure, chattering by fits.  Mr. Sumner was delicately prepared to encounter Mrs. Chump, “whom,” said Adela, “Edward himself finds it impossible to caricature;” and she affected to laugh at the woman.

“Happy the pencil that can reproduce!” Mr. Barrett exclaimed; and, meeting his smile, Cornelia said:  “Do you know, my feeling is, and I cannot at all account for it, that if she were a Catholic she would not seem so gross?”

“Some of the poetry of that religion would descend upon her, possibly,” returned Mr. Barrett.

“Do you mean,” Freshfield said quickly, “that she would stand a fair chance of being sainted?”

Out of this arose some polite fencing between the two.  Freshfield might have argued to advantage in a Court of law; but he was no match, on such topics and before such an audience, for a refined sentimentalist.  More than once he betrayed a disposition to take refuge in his class (he being son to one of the puisne Judges).  Cornelia speedily punished him, and to any correction from her he bowed his head.

Adela was this day gifted with an extraordinary insight.  Emilia alone of the party was as a blot to her; but the others she saw through, as if they had been walking transparencies.  She divined that Edward and Freshfield had both come, in concert, upon amorous business—­that it was Freshfield’s object to help Edward to a private interview with her, and, in return, Edward was to perform the same service for him with Cornelia.  So that Mr. Barrett was shockingly in the way of both; and the perplexity of these stupid fellows—­who would insist upon wondering why the man Barrett and the girl Emilia (musicians both:  both as it were, vagrants) did not walk together and talk of quavers and minims—­was extremely comic.  Passing the withered tree, Mr. Barrett deserved thanks from Freshfield, if he did not obtain them; for he lingered, surrendering his place.  And then Adela knew that the weight of Edward Buxley’s remonstrative wrath had fallen on silent Emilia, to whom she clung fondly.

“I have had a letter,” Edward murmured, in the voice that propitiates secresy.

“A letter?” she cried loud; and off flew the man like a rabbit into his hole, the mask of him remaining.

Emilia presently found Mr. Barrett at her elbow.  His hand clasped the book Cornelia had placed in the tree.

“It is hers,” said Emilia.

He opened it and pointed to his initials.  She looked in his face.

“Are you very ill?”

Adela turned round from Edward’s neighbouring head.  “Who is ill?”

Cornelia brought Freshfield to a stop:  “Ill?”

Before them all, book in hand, Mr. Barrett had to give assurance that he was hearty, and to appear to think that his words were accepted, in spite of blanched jowl and reddened under-lid.  Cornelia threw him one glance:  his eyes closed under it.  Adela found it necessary to address some such comforting exclamation as ‘Goodness gracious!’ to her observant spirit.