“Oh, thank you, Mrs. Bolt,” Honora answered.

It was, however, with mingled feelings that she thought of Peter’s arrival at this time.  Life, indeed, was full of strange coincidences!

There was a little door that led out of the house by the billiard room, Honora remembered, and contrived, after luncheon, to slip away and reach it.  She felt that she must be alone, and if she went to her room she was likely to be disturbed by Susan or Mrs. Joshua—­or indeed Mrs. Holt herself.  Honora meant to tell Susan the first of all.  She crossed the great lawn quickly, keeping as much as possible the trees and masses of shrubbery between herself and the house, and reached the forest.  With a really large fund of energy at her disposal, Honora had never been one to believe in the useless expenditure of it; nor did she feel the intense desire which a girl of another temperament might have had, under the same conditions, to keep in motion.  So she sat down on a bench within the borders of the wood.

It was not that she wished to reflect, in the ordinary meaning of the word, that she had sought seclusion, but rather to give her imagination free play.  The enormity of the change that was to come into her life did not appall her in the least; but she had, in connection with it, a sense of unreality which, though not unpleasant, she sought unconsciously to dissipate.  Howard Spence, she reflected with a smile, was surely solid and substantial enough, and she thought of him the more tenderly for the possession of these attributes.  A castle founded on such a rock was not a castle in Spain!

It did not occur to Honora that her thoughts might be more of the castle than of the rock:  of the heaven he was to hold on his shoulders than of the Hercules she had chosen to hold it.

She would write to her Aunt Mary and her Uncle Tom that very afternoon —­one letter to both.  Tears came into her eyes when she thought of them, and of their lonely life’ without her.  But they would come on to New York to visit her often, and they would be proud of her.  Of one thing she was sure—­she must go home to them at once—­on Tuesday.  She would tell Mrs. Holt to-morrow, and Susan to-night.  And, while pondering over the probable expression of that lady’s amazement, it suddenly occurred to her that she must write the letter immediately, because Peter Erwin was coming.

What would he say?  Should she tell him?  She was surprised to find that the idea of doing so was painful to her.  But she was aroused from these reflections by a step on the path, and raised her head to perceive the Vicomte.  His face wore an expression of triumph.

“At last,” he cried, “at last!” And he sat down on the bench beside her.  Her first impulse was to rise, yet for some inexplicable reason she remained.

“I always suspected in you the qualities of a Monsieur Lecoq,” she remarked.  “You have an instinct for the chase.”