"Yes, and I am here in consequence. It cut short my shooting, though."
"I am so sorry--"
"Tush; no apologies. The season opened gloriously; but I missed you sorely, Harry, when tramping alone over turnip fields, through miles of beans and yellow stubble, though I had some jolly days of it down in South Wales. Lady Naseby--
"She knows nothing of the secret engagement?" said I, hurriedly and anxiously.
"Nothing as yet."
"As yet! Must she be told?"
"Of course; but I shall make all that right, by-and-by. She believes now in the real character of her attaché, Mr. Guilfoyle, who intruded himself among us, and who has disappeared. Your perfect innocence has been proved alike to her and her daughter, and now you may win at a canter. The photo of you in the locket was abstracted from Winifred's album, and has her name written on the back of it. You are to ride over with me to Walcot Park, where I have left Winifred, as she refused flatly to come to Winchester--why, I know not. She will afford you an opportunity of slipping the ring again on your fair one's finger, and doing anything else that may suggest itself at such a time--you comprehend, eh? Winny bluntly asked Lady Naseby's permission to invite you, as you were so soon to leave England."
"The dear girl! God bless her!"
"So say I. Lady Naseby said at first that though you had been maligned, there had also been a contretemps of which even her French maid was cognisant; that she hated all contretemps and so forth; but Winny--you know how sweet the girl is, and how irresistible--carried her point, so you spend this evening there. Tell Evans to have your nag ready within the hour. That fellow is not forgetting his mother-tongue among the Sassenachs. He comes from our namesake's place, Dolwrheiddiog, 'the meadow of the salmon.' I know it well."
"If I could but meet Guilfoyle--" I was beginning.