'No. And do you get a walk like this every evening when the others are at their busiest?'
'Almost every evening; that's the one return to the poor lady's maid for losing her leisure when the others get it--in the absence of the family from home.'
'Is Miss Power a hard mistress?'
'No.'
'Rather fanciful than hard, I presume?'
'Just so, sir.'
'And she likes to appear to advantage, no doubt.'
'I suppose so,' said Milly, laughing. 'We all do.'
'When does she appear to the best advantage? When riding, or driving, or reading her book?'
'Not altogether then, if you mean the very best.'
'Perhaps it is when she sits looking in the glass at herself, and you let down her hair.'
'Not particularly, to my mind.'
'When does she to your mind? When dressed for a dinner-party or ball?'
'She's middling, then. But there is one time when she looks nicer and cleverer than at any. It is when she is in the gymnasium.'
'O--gymnasium?'
'Because when she is there she wears such a pretty boy's costume, and is so charming in her movements, that you think she is a lovely young youth and not a girl at all.'
'When does she go to this gymnasium?'
'Not so much as she used to. Only on wet mornings now, when she can't get out for walks or drives. But she used to do it every day.'
'I should like to see her there.'
'Why, sir?'
'I am a poor artist, and can't afford models. To see her attitudes would be of great assistance to me in the art I love so well.'
Milly shook her head. 'She's very strict about the door being locked. If I were to leave it open she would dismiss me, as I should deserve.'
'But consider, dear Miss Birch, the advantage to a poor artist the sight of her would be: if you could hold the door ajar it would be worth five pounds to me, and a good deal to you.'
'No,' said the incorruptible Milly, shaking her head. 'Besides, I don't always go there with her. O no, I couldn't!'
Milly remained so firm at this point that Dare said no more.
When he had left her he returned to the castle grounds, and though there was not much light he had no difficulty in discovering the gymnasium, the outside of which he had observed before, without thinking to inquire its purpose. Like the erections in other parts of the shrubberies it was constructed of wood, the interstices between the framing being filled up with short billets of fir nailed diagonally. Dare, even when without a settled plan in his head, could arrange for probabilities; and wrenching out one of the billets he looked inside. It seemed to be a simple oblong apartment, fitted up with ropes, with a little dressing-closet at one end, and lighted by a skylight or lantern in the roof. Dare replaced the wood and went on his way.