“You don’t count on it yourself?”
She shook her head. “With any other woman I should.”
“Why not with Mrs. Harman?”
“Cousin Louise has her ways,” said Miss Elizabeth slowly, and, whether she could not further explain her doubts, or whether she would not, that was all I got out of her on the subject at the time. I asked one or two more questions, but my companion merely shook her head again, alluding vaguely to her cousin’s “ways.” Then she brightened suddenly, and inquired when I would have my things sent up to the chateau from the inn.
At the risk of a misunderstanding which I felt I could ill afford, I resisted her kind hospitality, and the outcome of it was that there should be a kind of armistice, to begin with my dining at the chateau that evening. Thereupon she mounted to the saddle, a bit of gymnastics for which she declined my assistance, and looked down upon me from a great height.
“Did anybody ever tell you,” was her surprising inquiry, “that you are the queerest man of these times?”
“No,” I answered. “Don’t you think you’re a queerer woman?”
“FOOTLE!” she cried scornfully. “Be off to your woods and your woodscaping!”
The bay horse departed at a smart gait, not, I was glad to see, a parkish trot—Miss Elizabeth wisely set limits to her sacrifices to Mode—and she was far down the road before I had passed the outer fringe of trees.
My work was accomplished after a fashion more or less desultory that day; I had many absent moments, was restless, and walked more than I painted. Oliver Saffron did not join me in the late afternoon; nor did the echo of distant yodelling bespeak any effort on his part to find me. So I gave him up, and returned to the inn earlier than usual.