She was looking round her nervously, like a hunted creature.
“If possible, I don’t want Captain Stuart to know that I have come to see you to-night. Can we go somewhere just for a few minutes, where he is not likely to see us?”
“But—he is up to La Solitude, Mademoiselle?”
“At La Solitude? Oh no! Surely not?”
There was surprise and terror in the tone in which the girl repeated the name of the lonely house.
“Let’s come out of doors,” she exclaimed. “I—I hardly know what I am doing, Monsieur Popeau!”
He followed her, full of unease and acute curiosity; what could have happened up at La Solitude, to make Lily Fairfield look as she was looking now? And where was Angus Stuart?
“Surely you left Captain Stuart up at La Solitude?” he exclaimed, when they at last found themselves standing alone in the open air, gazing at one another in the half-darkness.
“I have not come from La Solitude. But even so, why should you think Captain Stuart is there, Monsieur Popeau?”
She asked the question in a voice she tried in vain to make natural and calm.