music is playing?" she said.

They went, walking with their arms entwined as other girls were doing,
Julia between the broad, white-skinned sisters, like a rapier between
cushions. The two younger girls ran on in front. "There is Mevrouw,"
they cried. "She is calling us. The carriage is ready, too; oh, do you
think it is already time to go?"

It seemed as if it really was the case. Vrouw Snieder stood clapping
her hands and beckoning to them, and the coachman appeared impatient
to be off. With reluctance, and many times repeated regrets, they
collected their wraps and baskets, and got into the carriage.

"Good-bye, beautiful wood, good-bye!" Denah said, leaning far out as
they started. "Oh, if one could but remain here till the moon rose!"

"It would be very damp," her mother observed. "The dew would fall."

To which incontestable remark Denah made no reply.

The return journey was much like the drive there, with one exception;
they passed one object of interest they had not seen before. It was
when they were nearing the outskirts of the town that Anna exclaimed,
"An Englishman! Look, look, Miss Julia, a compatriot of yours!"

The season was full early for tourists, and at no time did the place
attract many. Englishmen who came now probably came on business which
was unlikely to bring them out to these quiet, flat fields. But Anna
and Denah, who joined her in a much more demonstrative look-out than
Marbridge would have considered well-bred, were insistent on the
nationality.

"He walks like an Englishman," Anna said, "as if all the world
belonged to him."

"And looks like one," Denah added; "he has no moustache, and wears a
glass in his eye, look, Miss Julia."

Julia looked, then drew back rather quickly. They were right, it was
an Englishman; it was of all men Rawson-Clew.

What was he doing here? By what extraordinary chance he came to be in
this unlikely place she could not think. She was very glad that
Mevrouw felt the air chilly, and so had had the leather flaps pulled
over part of the open sides of the carriage; this and the eager
sisters screened her so well that it was unlikely he could see her.

"Is he not an Englishman?" Anna asked.

"Yes," she answered; "one could not mistake him for anything else."

"I wonder if he recognised you as a country-woman," Anna speculated;
and Julia said she did not consider herself typically English in
appearance.

The sisters talked for the rest of the way of t