‘I will ride that way homeward this evening. Do you consider by eight o’clock what little article, what little treat, you would most like of any.’
‘I will, sir,’ said Margery, now warming up to the idea. ‘Where shall I meet you? Or will you call at the house, sir?’
‘Ah—no. I should not wish the circumstances known out of which our acquaintance rose. It would be more proper—but no.’
Margery, too, seemed rather anxious that he should not call. ‘I could come out, sir,’ she said. ‘My father is odd-tempered, and perhaps—’
It was agreed that she should look over a stile at the top of her father’s garden, and that he should ride along a bridle-path outside, to receive her answer. ‘Margery,’ said the gentleman in conclusion, ‘now that you have discovered me under ghastly conditions, are you going to reveal them, and make me an object for the gossip of the curious?’
‘No, no, sir!’ she replied earnestly. ‘Why should I do that?’
‘You will never tell?’
‘Never, never will I tell what has happened here this morning.’
‘Neither to your father, nor to your friends, nor to any one?’
‘To no one at all,’ she said.