(a sequestered part of the Vane estate), where trees and
lilies of the valley grew wild, and where the girls were accustomed to
go for picnics or sketching. As soon as he had turned a corner, Gower
and I turned it too, and with perseverance worthy a better cause, Tom
and I followed Belle in and out and down the road which led to Fern
Wood--a flat, dusty, stony two miles--on which, in the blazing noon of a
hot midsummer day, nothing short of Satanic coercion, or love of
Geraldine Vane, would have induced our beauty to immolate himself, and
expose his delicate complexion.

"I bet you anything, Tom," said I, confidently, "that this is a hoax,
like yesterday's. Geraldine will no more meet Belle there than all the
Ordnance Office."

"Well, we shall see," responded Gower. "Somebody might get the
note-paper from the bookseller, and the crest seal through the servants,
but they'll hardly get Geraldine there bodily against her will."

We waited at the entrance of the wood, shrouded ourselves in the wild
hawthorn hedges, while we could still see Belle--of course we did not
mean to be near enough to overhear him--who paced up and down the green
alleys under the firs and larches, rendered doubly dark by the
evergreens, brambles, and honeysuckles,

which, ripened by the sun,
Forbade the sun to enter.

He paced up and down there a good ten minutes, prying about with his
eye-glass, but unable to see very far in the tangled boughs, and heavy
dusky light of the untrimmed wood. Then there was the flutter of
something azure among the branches, and Gower gave vent to a low whistle
of surprise.

"By George, Hardinge! there's Geraldine! Well! I didn't think she'd have
done it. You see they're all alike if they get the opportunity."

It _was_ Geraldine herself--it was her fluttering muslin, her abundant
folds, her waving ribbons, her tiny sailor hat, and her little veil, and
under the veil her face, with its delicate tinting, its pencilled
eyebrows, and its undulating bright-colored hair. There was no doubt
about it: it was Geraldine. I vow I was as sorry to have to tell it to
Fairlie as if I'd had to tell him she was dead, for I knew how it would
cut him to the heart to know not only that she had given herself to his
rival, but that his little playmate, whom he had thought truth, and
honesty, and daylight itself, should have stooped to a clandestine
interview arranged through an advertisement! Their retreating figures
were