ook."

CHAPTER XLIII. SOUNDING.

Mirabel left Francine to enter the lodge by herself. His mind was
disturbed: he felt the importance of gaining time for reflection before
he and Emily met again.

The keeper's garden was at the back of the lodge. Passing through the
wicket-gate, he found a little summer-house at a turn in the path.
Nobody was there: he went in and sat down.

At intervals, he had even yet encouraged himself to underrate the true
importance of the feeling which Emily had awakened in him. There was an
end to all self-deception now. After what Francine had said to him, this
shallow and frivolous man no longer resisted the all-absorbing influence
of love. He shrank under the one terrible question that forced itself on
his mind:--Had that jealous girl spoken the truth?

In what process of investigation could he trust, to set this anxiety at
rest? To apply openly to Emily would be to take a liberty, which Emily
was the last person in the world to permit. In his recent intercourse
with her he had felt more strongly than ever the importance of speaking
with reserve. He had been scrupulously careful to take no unfair
advantage of his opportunity, when he had removed her from the meeting,
and when they had walked together, with hardly a creature to observe
them, in the lonely outskirts of the town. Emily's gaiety and good humor
had not led him astray: he knew that these were bad signs, viewed in the
interests of love. His one hope of touching her deeper sympathies was
to wait for the help that might yet come from time and chance. With a
bitter sigh, he resigned himself to the necessity of being as agreeable
and amusing as ever: it was just possible that he might lure her into
alluding to Alban Morris, if he began innocently by making her laugh.

As he rose to return to the lodge, the keeper's little terrier, prowling
about the garden, looked into the summer-house. Seeing a stranger, the
dog showed his teeth and growled.

Mirabel shrank back against the wall behind him, trembling in every
limb. His eyes stared in terror as the dog came nearer: barking in high
triumph over the discovery of a frightened man whom he could bully.
Mirabel called out for help. A laborer at work in the garden ran to the
place--and stopped with a broad grin of amusement at seeing a grown man
terrified by a barking dog. "Well," he said to himself, after Mirabel
had passed out under protection, "there goes a coward if ever there