He laughed.  Past and future were blotted out, and he lived only in the present.  He could think of nothing but that she was here beside him.  Afterwards, cataclysms might come and welcome.

“Isn’t there another place,” he asked, “where I might lose my way?”

She turned and gave him one of the swift, searching looks he recalled so well:  a look the meaning of which he could not declare, save that she seemed vainly striving to fathom something in him—­as though he were not fathomable!  He thought she smiled a little as she took the left-hand path.

“You will remember me to your father?” she said.  “I hope he is not suffering.”

“He is not suffering,” Austen replied.  “Perhaps—­if it were not too much to ask—­perhaps you might come to see him, sometime?  I can think of nothing that would give him greater pleasure.”

“I will come—­sometime,” she answered.  “I am going away to-morrow, but—­”

“Away?” he repeated, in dismay.  Now that he was beside her, all unconsciously the dominating male spirit which was so strong in him, and which moves not woman alone, but the world, was asserting itself.  For the moment he was the only man, and she the only woman, in the universe.

“I am going on a promised visit to a friend of mine.”

“For how long?” he demanded.

“I don’t know, said Victoria, calmly; probably until she gets tired of me.  And there,” she added, “are the stables, where no doubt you will find your faithful Pepper.”

They had come out upon an elevation above the hard service drive, and across it, below them, was the coach house with its clock-tower and weather-vane, and its two wings, enclosing a paved court where a whistling stable-boy was washing a carriage.  Austen regarded this scene an instant, and glanced back at her profile.  It was expressionless.

“Might I not linger—­a few minutes?” he asked.

Her lips parted slightly in a smile, and she turned her head.  How wonderfully, he thought, it was poised upon her shoulders.

“I haven’t been very hospitable, have I?” she said.  But then, you seemed in such a hurry to go, didn’t you?  You were walking so fast when I met you that you quite frightened me.”

“Was I?” asked Austen, in surprise.

She laughed.

“You looked as if you were ready to charge somebody.  But this isn’t a very nice place—­to linger, and if you really will stay awhile,” said Victoria, “we might walk over to the dairy, where that model protege of yours, Eben Fitch, whom you once threatened with corporal chastisement if he fell from grace, is engaged.  I know he will be glad to see you.”

Austen laughed as he caught up with her.  She was already halfway across the road.

“Do you always beat people if they do wrong?” she asked.

“It was Eben who requested it, if I remember rightly,” he said.  “Fortunately, the trial has not yet arrived.  Your methods,” he added, “seem to be more successful with Eben.”