As a matter of fact, General Boldero had impressed thus much upon Sue, having perceived on this occasion more than she did. He saw that Leo was restive, he also saw that she was developing. He was not going to have her throw herself away a second time, but he was content to wait, and he was vaguely afraid that she would not be so. Wherefore she must be kept under lock and key.
The situation is now perhaps plain before our readers.
"Hollo?" said a voice on one side of a woodland stile.
"Hollo?" responded another opposite. "It's you?" continued Leo, stepping across, and giving Valentine Purcell her hand. "So you've come back, Val? What ages you have been away! I have missed you dreadfully."
"Not you. I don't believe it." Val beamed all over. "I say, have you though? You look uncommonly fit;" and he eyed her with a certain dubious admiration. If she were laughing at him, he was not going to be taken in, as he had been on several previous occasions.
"To be sure I'm fit, why shouldn't I be fit? I lead, oh, such a healthy life," retorted she, with mocking emphasis. "I eat, and I sleep, and I'm out all day. I do nothing but health from morning to night. Well?"
"Did you know I had come back?" pursued he. "Did you think I should be here about this time? Did you----"
"Think you'd bother me with a lot of silly questions?" Leo whose first greeting had been simple and natural, assumed a pettish, artificial air. "Can't you think of anything more amusing to say than, 'Did you, did you, did you?'"
"I don't believe you missed me a bit, Leo."
"Neither do I, now I come to think of it. I forget when you went."
"Two months ago to-day. Don't you remember? Don't you----"
"And now it will be, 'Don't you--don't you--don't you?' Why should I remember? What is it to me that I should remember?"
She had said it, and he had heard it, and stuck to the point like a leech. It mattered not that he had come very near to quarrelling with Leo before going off on his annual round of shooting visits; that she had been capricious and disdainful, and had once gone so far as to tell him that he bored her--(which no one had ever openly told Val before)--he had forgotten all that; and though during his absence he had also forgotten a good deal besides, and found other girls pretty and attractive, no sooner was he back at home than the needle of his mental compass flew round to its old point. He must needs hurry over to the Abbey, and take the field-path in which he had so often walked and talked with Leonore.