"You are Mr. Campion, I think?" she said. "Yes, I shall be very glad of your help. I need not introduce myself, I see. Jack has been very naughty: he ran away from his nurse this morning, and I said that I would bring him back. And now he has fallen into the brook."

"We must get him back," said Sydney, rather amused at her matter-of-fact tone. "I will go over for him."

"No, I am afraid you must not do that," she answered. "There is a plank a little further down the stream; we will go there."

But Sydney was across the water by this time. He lifted the child lightly in his arms and strode back across the stones, scarcely wetting himself at all. Then he set the boy down at her side.

"There!" he said, "that is better than going down to the plank. Now, young man, you must run home again as fast as you can, or you will catch cold."

"I am very much obliged to you," said the young lady, looking at him, as he thought, rather earnestly, but without a smile. "Jack, you know, is Sir John Pynsent's eldest son."

"So I divined. I think he would get home more quickly if I took one of his hands and you took the other, and we hurried him up the hill; don't you think so?"

He had no interest at all in Jack, but he wanted to talk with this dark-eyed violin-playing damsel. Sydney had indulged in a good deal of flirtation in his time, and he had no objection to whiling away an hour in the company of any pretty girl; and yet there was some sort of dignity about this girl's manner which warned him to be a little upon his guard.

"You are member for Vanebury," she said, rather abruptly, when they had dragged little Jack some distance up the gra.s.sy slope.

"I have that honor."

"I hope," she said, with a mixture of gentleness and decision which took him by surprise, "that you mean to pay some attention to the condition of the working-cla.s.ses in Vanebury?"

"Well, I don't know; is there any special reason?"

"They are badly paid, badly housed, over-worked and under-educated," she said, succinctly; "and if the member for Vanebury would bestir himself in their cause, I think that something might be done."

"Even a member is not omnipotent, I'm afraid."

"No, but he has influence. You are bound to use it for good," she returned.

Sydney raised his eyebrows. He was not used to being lectured on his duties, and this young lady's remarks struck him as slightly impertinent. He glanced at her almost as if he would have told her so; but she looked so very pretty and so very young that he could no more check her than he could have checked a child.

"You have very pretty scenery about here," he said, by way of changing the conversation.

The girl's face drooped at once; she did not answer.

"What an odd young woman she is," said Sydney to himself. "What an odd governess for the children!"

Suddenly she looked up, with a very sweet bright look. "I am afraid I offended you," she said, deprecatingly. "I did not mean to say anything wrong. I am so much interested in the Vanebury working people, although we are here some miles distant from them, that when I heard you were coming I made up my mind at once that I would speak to you."

"You have--friends, perhaps, in that district?" said Sydney.

"N--no--not exactly," she said, hesitating. "But I know a good deal about Vanebury."

"Nan goes there very often, don't you, Nan?" said little Jack, suddenly interposing. "And papa says you do more harm than good."

"Nan" colored high. "You should not repeat what papa says," she answered, severely. "You have often been told that it is naughty."

"But it's true," Jack murmured, doggedly. And Sydney could not help smiling at the discomfited expression on "Nan's" face.

However, he was--or thought he was--quite equal to the occasion. He changed the subject, and began talking adroitly about her tastes and occupations. Nan soon became at ease with him and answered his questions cheerfully, although she seemed puzzled now and then by the strain of compliment into which he had a tendency to fall. The house was reached at last; and Jack s.n.a.t.c.hed his hands from those of his companions, and ran indoors. Nan halted at a side-door, and now spoke with the sweet earnestness that impressed Sydney even more than her lovely face.

"You have been very kind to us, Mr. Campion. I don't know how to thank you."

It was on the tip of Sydney's tongue to use some badinage such as he would have done, in his light and easy fashion, to a servant-maid or shop-girl. But something in her look caused him, luckily, to refrain. He went as near as he dared to the confines of love-making.

"Give me the flower you wear," he said, leaning a little towards her.

"Then I shall at least have a remembrance of you."

His tone and his look were warmer than he knew. She shrank back, visibly surprised, and rather offended. Before he could add a word she had quietly taken the rosebud from her dress, handed it to him, and disappeared into the house, closing the door behind her in a somewhat uncompromising way. Sydney was left alone on the gravelled path, with a half-withered rosebud in his hand, and a consciousness of having made himself ridiculous.

"She seems to be rather a little vixen," he said to himself, as he strolled up to his rooms to make some change in his clothes, which were damper than he liked. "What business has a pretty little governess to take that tone? Deuced out of place, I call it. I wonder if she'll be down to breakfast. She has very fetching eyes."

But she was not down to breakfast, and nothing was said about her, so Sydney concluded that her meals were taken in the schoolroom with the children.

"Such a pity--poor dear Nan has a headache," he heard Lady Pynsent saying by and by. "I hoped that she would come down and give us some music this evening, but she says she won't be able for it."

Sydney consoled himself with pretty Mrs. Murray.

"The fair violinist is out of tune, it seems," he said, in the course of an afternoon stroll with the new charmer.

"Who? Oh, Nan Pynsent."

"Pynsent? No. At least, I don't mean the pianiste: I mean the young lady who played the violin last night."

"Yes, Nan Pynsent, Sir John's half-sister. The heiress--and some people say the beauty of the county. Why do you look so stupefied, Mr.

Campion?"

"I did not know her, that was all. I thought--who, then, is the lady who played the piano?"

"Mary Pynsent, a cousin. You surely did not think that _she_ was the heiress?"

"Why did not Sir John's sister come down to dinner?" said Sydney, waxing angry.

"She has a craze about the children. Their governess is away, and she insists on looking after them. She is rather quixotic, you know; full of grand schemes for the future, and what she will do when she comes of age. Her property is all in Vanebury, by the bye: you must let her talk to you about the miners if you want to win her favor. She will be of age in a few months."

"I shall not try to win her favor."

"Dear me, how black you look, Mr. Campion. Are you vexed that you have not made her acquaintance?"

"Not at all," said Sydney, clearing his brow. "How could I have looked at her when you were there?"

The ba.n.a.l compliment pleased Mrs. Murray, and she began to talk of trivial matters in her usual trivial strain. Sydney scarcely listened: for once he was disconcerted, and angry with himself. He knew that he would have talked in a very different strain if he had imagined for one moment that Jack's companion was Miss Pynsent. He had not, perhaps, definitely _said_ anything that he could regret; but he was sorry for the whole tone of his conversation. Would Miss Pynsent repeat his observations, he wondered, to her sister-in-law? Sydney did not often put himself in a false position, but he felt that his tact had failed him now. He returned to the house in an unusually disturbed state of mind; and a sentence which he overheard in the afternoon did not add to his tranquillity.

He was pa.s.sing along a corridor that led, as he thought, to his own room; but the multiplicity of turnings had bewildered him, and he was obliged to retrace his steps. While doing so, he pa.s.sed Lady Pynsent's boudoir. Although he was unconscious of this fact, his attention was attracted by the sound of a voice from within. Nan Pynsent's voice was not loud, but it had a peculiarly penetrating quality; and her words followed Sydney down the corridor with disagreeable distinctness.

"Selina," she was saying--Selina was Lady Pynsent's name--"I thought you said that Mr. Campion was a _gentleman_!"

"Well, dear----" Lady Pynsent was beginning; but Sydney, quickening his steps, heard no more. He was now in a rage, and disposed to vote Miss Pynsent the most unpleasant, conceited young person of his acquaintance.