“Why need you seek so far for a motive,” she returned with laughing evasion. “Is this all the thanks I get for bringing you to see this romantic dell? It is the beauty spot of, at any rate, this part of the forest. I found it out by accident the other day, and——”
“Thought it wanted only one thing to complete its romance,” he laughed.
“No, sir; I thought nothing of the sort. It was before——” she stopped suddenly.
But it was too late. “Before you knew me, Philippa?” he supplied, with all an accepted lover’s confidence. “Yes? Now you shall not deny it. Did it seem as delightful then as it does to-day?”
“Hardly,” she returned archly. “There was no sun that day; it was grey and dull, but the place was lovely nevertheless.”
“Nothing like this?” he urged.
“I am glad to see it in the glory of the sunlight,” she said, still baffling him.
“And with me, Philippa?”
“I wanted to bring you to see it,” she replied fencingly, although her eyes played traitor to her tone of laughing indifference. “It has been a long walk, and I hope you are grateful. You know, sir, you would probably never have discovered it for yourself; or if you had passed by, your mind would have been so full of partridges and hares that you would never have noticed it.”
“And so Count Zarka has nothing to do with our coming here?” he persisted, only half convinced, and still unable to feel happy on the subject.