“The conversation is growing quite personal!” said Walden, a broad smile lighting up his fine soft eyes—­“Shall we finish it at the Manor when I come up to tea?”

“But are you really coming?” queried Cicely—­“And when?”

“Suppose I say this afternoon—–­” he began.  Cicely clapped her hands.

“Good!  I’ll scamper home and tell Maryllia!  I’ll say I have met you, and that I’ve been as impudent as I possibly could be to you—–­”

“No, don’t say that!” laughed Walden—­“Say that I have found you to be a very delightful and original young lady—–­”

“I’m not a young lady,”—­said Cicely, decisively—­“I was born a peasant on the sea-coast of Cornwall—­and I’m glad of it.  A ’young lady’ nowadays means a milliner’s apprentice or a draper’s model.  I am neither.  I am just a girl—­and hope, if I live, to be a woman.  I’ll take my own ideas of a suitable message from you to Maryllia—­ don’t you bother!” And she nodded sagaciously.  “I won’t make ructions, I promise!  Come about five!”

She waved her hand and ran off, leaving Walden in a mood between perplexity and amusement.  She was certainly an ‘original,’ and he hardly knew what to make of her.  There was something ‘uncanny’ and goblin-like in her appearance, and yet her sallow face had a certain charm when the smile illumined it, and the light of aspiration burned up in the large wild eyes.  In any case, she had persuaded him in a moment, as it were, and almost involuntarily, to take tea at the Manor that afternoon.  Why he had consented to do what he had hitherto refused, he could not imagine.  Cicely’s remark that Miss Vancourt thought him ‘rather rude,’ worried him a little.

“Perhaps I have been rude”—­he reflected, uneasily—­“But I am not a society man;—­I’m altogether out of my element in the company of ladies—­and it seemed so much better that I should avoid being drawn into any intimacy with persons who are not likely to have anything in common with me—­but of course I ought to be civil—­in fact, I suppose I ought to be neighbourly—–­”

Here a sudden irritation against the nature of his own thoughts disturbed him.  He was not arguing fairly with himself, and he knew it.  He was perfectly aware that ever since the day of their meeting in the village post-office, he had wished to see Miss Vancourt again.  He had hoped she might pass the gate of the rectory, or perhaps even look into his garden for a moment,—­but his expectation had not been realised.  He had heard of Cicely Bourne’s arrival,—­and he had received two charmingly-worded notes from Maryllia, inviting him to the Manor,—­which invitations, as has already been stated, he had, with briefest courtesy, declined.  Now, why,—­if he indeed wished to see her again,—­had he deliberately refused the opportunities given him of doing so?  He could not answer this at all satisfactorily to his own mind, and he was considerably annoyed with himself to be forced to admit the existence of certain portions of his mental composition which were apparently not to be probed by logic, or measured by mathematics.