A little further on Susy dropped her handkerchief, and was obliged to dart out and run back to the end of the file to recover it.
But she gave another swift glance of her blue eyes as she snatched it up and demurely ran back to her place.

The procession passed on, but when Clarence reached the spot where she had paused he saw a three-cornered bit of paper lying in the grass.

He was too discreet to pick it up while the girls were still in sight, but continued on, returning to it later.
It contained a few words in a schoolgirl's hand, hastily scrawled in pencil: "Come to the south wall near the big pear-tree at six." Delighted as Clarence felt, he was at the same time embarrassed.

He could not understand the necessity of this mysterious rendezvous.
He knew that if she was a scholar she was under certain conventual restraints; but with the privileges of his position and friendship with his teachers, he believed that Father Sobriente would easily procure him an interview with this old play-fellow, of whom he had often spoken, and who was, with himself, the sole survivor of his tragical past.

And trusted as he was by Sobriente, there was something in this clandestine though innocent rendezvous that went against his loyalty.