'I am not in any difficulty, thank you.'
'Only you don't know your way,' he said, with perhaps a little amusement, though it hardly appeared. 'Is it true that you will not give me the honour of guiding you?'
'In the first place,' said Miss Hazel, wreathing her pink flowers with quick fingers, 'I know the way by which I came, perfectly. In the second place, I never submit voluntarily to anybody's guidance.'
'Will you excuse me for correcting myself. I meant, in "not knowing your way," merely the way in which you are to go.'
'Do you know it?'
'If you suffer my guidance—undoubtedly.'
'Ah!—if. In that case so do I. But I "suffered" so much on the last occasion—and Dr. Maryland has left the Mountain.'
'I would not for the world be importunate! Perhaps you will direct me if I shall inform any one of your hiding place—or do you desire to have it remain such?'
'Thank you,' said Miss Hazel, framing the landscape in her pink wreath and gazing at it intently, 'I suppose there is not much danger. But if you see Mr. Falkirk you may reveal to him my distressed condition. He needs stimulus occasionally.'
Rollo lifted his hat with his usual Spanish courtesy; then disappeared, but not indeed by the way he had come. He threw himself upon an outstanding oak branch, from which, lightly and lithely, as if he had been the red squirrel himself, he dropped to some place out of sight. One or two bounds, rustling amid leaves and branches, and he had gone from hearing as well as from view.