Jeanne nodded sympathetically. She was beginning to wonder why this girl had come out from the house with the obvious intention of speaking to her. She stood by her side, not exactly awkward, but still not wholly at her ease, her hands clasped behind her straight back, her black eyebrows drawn together in a little uneasy frown. Her coarse brown skirt was not long enough to conceal her wonderfully shaped ankles. Sun and wind had done little more than slightly tan her clear complexion. She had somehow the appearance of a girl of some other nation. There was something stronger, more forceful, more brilliant about her, than her position seemed to warrant.
"There is a question, miss," she said at last, abruptly, "I should like to ask you. I should have asked you when you first came, if I had been in when you came to look at the rooms."
"What is it?" Jeanne asked quietly.
"I've a good eye for faces," Kate said, "and I seldom forget one. Weren't you the young lady who was staying up at the Red Hall a few weeks ago?"
Jeanne nodded.
"Yes," she said, "I was staying there. It was because I liked the place so much, and because I was so much happier here than in London, that I came back."
There was a moment's silence. Jeanne looked up and found Kate's magnificent eyes fixed steadfastly upon her face.
"Is it for no other reason, miss," she asked, "that you have come back?"
"For none other in the world," Jeanne answered. "I was unhappy in London, and I wanted to get somewhere where I should be quite unknown. That is why I came here."
"You didn't come back," Kate asked, "to see more of Mr. De la Borne, then?"