("Saucy minx as ever,” Charles murmured to me.  “She said it on purpose.”) “No, my dear madam,” he continued, aloud; “you have been quite misinformed. I am Sir Charles Vandrift; and I am not a Tartar.  If your husband is a man of science I respect and admire him.  It is geology that has made me what I am to-day.”  And he drew himself up proudly.  “We owe to it the present development of South African mining.”

The lady blushed as one seldom sees a mature woman blush—­but exactly as I had seen Madame Picardet and White Heather.  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said, in a confused way that recalled Mrs. Granton.  “Forgive my hasty speech.  I—­I didn’t know you.”

("She did,” Charles whispered.  “But let that pass.”) “Oh, don’t think of it again; so many people disturb the birds, don’t you know, that we’re obliged in self-defence to warn trespassers sometimes off our lovely mountains.  But I do it with regret—­with profound regret.  I admire the—­er—­the beauties of Nature myself; and, therefore, I desire that all others should have the freest possible access to them—­possible, that is to say, consistently with the superior claims of Property.”

“I see,” the lady replied, looking up at him quaintly.  “I admire your wish, though not your reservation.  I’ve just been reading those sweet lines of Wordsworth’s—­

  And O, ye fountains, meadows, hills, and groves,
  Forebode not any severing of our loves.

I suppose you know them?” And she beamed on him pleasantly.

“Know them?” Charles answered.  “Know them!  Oh, of course, I know them.  They’re old favourites of mine—­in fact, I adore Wordsworth.”  (I doubt whether Charles has ever in his life read a line of poetry, except Doss Chiderdoss in the Sporting Times.) He took the book and glanced at them.  “Ah, charming, charming!” he said, in his most ecstatic tone.  But his eyes were on the lady, and not on the poet.

I saw in a moment how things stood.  No matter under what disguise that woman appeared to him, and whether he recognised her or not, Charles couldn’t help falling a victim to Madame Picardet’s attractions.  Here he actually suspected her; yet, like a moth round a candle, he was trying his hardest to get his wings singed!  I almost despised him with his gigantic intellect!  The greatest men are the greatest fools, I verily believe, when there’s a woman in question.

The husband strolled up by this time, and entered into conversation with us.  According to his own account, his name was Forbes-Gaskell, and he was a Professor of Geology in one of those new-fangled northern colleges.  He had come to Seldon rock-spying, he said, and found much to interest him.  He was fond of fossils, but his special hobby was rocks and minerals.  He knew a vast deal about cairngorms and agates and such-like pretty things, and showed Charles quartz and felspar and red cornelian, and I don’t know what else, in the crags on the hillside.  Charles pretended to listen to him with the deepest interest and even respect, never for a moment letting him guess he knew for what purpose this show of knowledge had been recently acquired.  If we were ever to catch the man, we must not allow him to see we suspected him.  So Charles played a dark game.  He swallowed the geologist whole without question.