ss.'

'Why, he said that _you knew_,' I replied.

The Doctor looked honestly puzzled.

'Will he stay long away? pray tell me.'

The Doctor looked into my troubled face with inquiring and darkened eyes,
like one who half reads another's meaning; and then he said a little
briskly, but not sharply--

'Well, _I_ don't know, I'm sure, Miss; no, indeed, you must have mistaken;
there's nothing that _I_ know.'

There was a little pause, and he added--

'No. He never mentioned any friend to me.' I fancied that he was made
uncomfortable by my question, and wanted to hide the truth. Perhaps I was
partly right.

'Oh! Doctor Bryerly, pray, _pray_ who is the friend, and where is he
going?'

'I do _assure_ you,' he said, with a strange sort of impatience, 'I don't
know; it is all nonsense.'

And he turned to go, looking, I think, annoyed and disconcerted.

A terrific suspicion crossed my brain like lightning.

'Doctor, one word,' I said, I believe, quite wildly. 'Do you--do you think
his mind is at all affected?'

'Insane?' he said, looking at me with a sudden, sharp inquisitiveness, that
brightened into a smile. 'Pooh, pooh! Heaven forbid! not a saner man in
England.'

Then with a little nod he walked on, carrying, as I believed,
notwithstanding his disclaimer, the secret with him. In the afternoon
Doctor Bryerly went away.

CHAPTER XVII

_AN ADVENTURE_

For many days after our quarrel, Madame hardly spoke to me. As for lessons,
I was not much troubled with them. It was plain, too, that my father had
spoken to her, for she never after that day proposed our extending our
walks beyond the precincts of Knowl.

Knowl, however, was a very considerable territory, and it was possible
for a much better pedestrian than I to tire herself effectually, without
passing its limits. So we took occasionally long walks.

After some weeks of sullenness, during which for days at a time she hardly
spoke to me, and seemed lost in dark and evil abstraction, she once more,
and somewhat suddenly, recovered her spirits, and grew quite friendly. Her
gaieties and friendliness were not reassuring, and in my mind presaged
approaching mischief and treachery. The days were shortening to the wintry
span. The edge of the red sun had already touched the horizon as Madame and
I, overtaken at the warren by his last beams, were hastening homeward.

A narrow carriage-road traverses this wild region of the park, to which a
distant gate g