'Well?' rather impatiently.
'I will beg your pardon afterwards for following Etta's advice, but I did watch, and it was not long before I came round to her opinion.'
'Mr. Hamilton!'
'Wait a moment before you get angry with me again. I never saw you in a passion before'; but I knew he was laughing at me. 'Etta was certainly right in one thing: I seemed always finding you together.'
'That was because I often met Mr. Tudor in the village, and he turned back and walked with me a little; but we always talked of Jill.'
'How could I know that?' in rather an injured voice. 'Were you talking of Miss Jocelyn in the vicarage kitchen-garden that evening?'
'Probably,' was my cool reply; for how could I remember all the subjects of our conversation?
'And when you went to Hyde Park Gate, you were together then,—Leah saw you,—and—' But I could bear no more.
'How could I know that I should be watched and spied upon, and all my innocent actions misrepresented?' I exclaimed indignantly. 'It was not fair, Mr. Hamilton. I could not have believed it of you, that you should listen to such things against me. That boy, too!'
'Nonsense!' speaking in his old good-humoured voice, and looking exceedingly pleased. 'He is five-and-twenty, and a very good-looking fellow: a girl might do worse for herself than marry Lawrence Tudor.'