No one could have understood better than I that this was setting a bad example to the acolyte who sat, likewise facing an easel, ten paces to my left; a very sportsmanlike figure of a painter indeed, in her short skirt and long coat of woodland brown, the fine brown of dead oak-leaves; a “devastating” selection of colour that!—­being much the same shade as her hair—­with brown for her hat too, and the veil encircling the small crown thereof, and brown again for the stout, high, laced boots which protected her from the wet tangle underfoot.  Who could have expected so dashing a young person as this to do any real work at painting?  Yet she did, narrowing her eyes to the finest point of concentration, and applying herself to the task in hand with a persistence which I found, on that particular morning, far beyond my own powers.

As she leaned back critically, at the imminent risk of capsizing her camp-stool, and herself with it, in her absorption, some ill-suppressed token of amusement most have caught her ear, for she turned upon me with suspicion, and was instantly moved to moralize upon the reluctance I had shown to accept her as a companion for my excursions; taking as her theme, in contrast, her own present display of ambition; all in all a warm, if over-coloured, sketch of the idle master and the industrious apprentice.  It made me laugh again, upon which she changed the subject.

“An indefinable something tells me,” she announced coldly, “that henceforth you needn’t be so drastically fearful of being dragged to the chateau for dinner, nor dejeuner either!”

“Did anything ever tell you that I had cause to fear it?”

“Yes,” she said, but too simply.  “Jean Ferret.”

“Anglicise that ruffian’s name,” I muttered, mirth immediately withering upon me, “and you’ll know him better.  To save time:  will you mention anything you can think of that he hasn’t told you?”

Miss Elliott cocked her head upon one side to examine the work of art she was producing, while a slight smile, playing about her lips, seemed to indicate that she was appeased.  “You and Miss Ward are old and dear friends, aren’t you?” she asked absently.

“We are!” I answered between my teeth.  “For years I have sent her costly jewels—­”

She interrupted me by breaking outright into a peal of laughter, which rang with such childish delight that I retorted by offering several malevolent observations upon the babbling of French servants and the order of mind attributable to those who listened to them.  Her defence was to affect inattention and paint busily until some time after I had concluded.

“I think she’s going to take Cressie Ingle,” she said dreamily, with the air of one whose thoughts have been far, far away.  “It looks preponderously like it.  She’s been teetertottering these Ages and Ages between you—­”

“Between whom?”