He was not going to have
her throw herself away a second time, but he was content to wait, and he
was vaguely afraid that she would not be so. Wherefore she must be kept
under lock and key.

The situation is now perhaps plain before our readers.

"Hollo?" said a voice on one side of a woodland stile.

"Hollo?" responded another opposite. "It's you?" continued Leo, stepping
across, and giving Valentine Purcell her hand. "So you've come back,
Val? What ages you have been away! I have missed you dreadfully."

"Not you. I don't believe it." Val beamed all over. "I say, have you
though? You look uncommonly fit;" and he eyed her with a certain dubious
admiration. If she were laughing at him, he was not going to be taken
in, as he had been on several previous occasions.

"To be sure I'm fit, why shouldn't I be fit? I lead, oh, such a healthy
life," retorted she, with mocking emphasis. "I eat, and I sleep, and I'm
out all day. I do nothing but health from morning to night. Well?"

"Did you really miss me, Leo?"

"Humph!" said Leo, beginning to walk on.

"Did you know I had come back?" pursued he. "Did you think I should be
here about this time? Did you----"

"Think you'd bother me with a lot of silly questions?" Leo whose first
greeting had been simple and natural, assumed a pettish, artificial air.
"Can't you think of anything more amusing to say than, 'Did you, did
you, did you?'"

"Ha--ha--ha!"

"And then to laugh idiotically!"

"I don't believe you missed me a bit, Leo."

"Neither do I, now I come to think of it. I forget when you went."

"Two months ago to-day. Don't you remember? Don't you----"

"And now it will be, 'Don't you--don't you--don't you?' Why should I
remember? What is it to me that I should remember?"

"Anyhow you said you had missed me."

She had said it, and he had heard it, and stuck to the point like a
leech. It mattered not that he had come very near to quarrelling with
Leo before going off on his annual round of shooting visits; that she
had been capricious and disdainful, and had once gone so far as to tell
him that he bored her--(which no one had ever openly told Val
before)--he had forgotten all that; and though during his absence he had
also forgotten a good deal besides, and found other girls pretty and
attractive, no sooner was he back at home than the needle of his mental
compass flew round to its old point. He must needs hurry over to the
Abbey, and take the field-path in wh