He sat by me and didn’t speak at first.  Just then Di passed the far-away, open door of the ballroom, dancing with Lord Robert West, the Duke of Glasgow’s brother.

“Thank you so much for the book,” I said.

(He had sent me a book that morning—­one he’d heard me say I wanted.)

He didn’t seem to hear, and then he turned suddenly, with one of his nice smiles.  I always think he has the nicest smile in the world:  and certainly he has the nicest voice.  His eyes looked very kind, and a little sad.  I willed him hard to love me.

“It made me happy to get it,” I went on.

“It made me happy to send it,” he said.

“Does it please you to do things for me?” I asked.

“Why, of course.”

“You do like poor little me a tiny bit, then?” I couldn’t help adding—­“Even though I’m different from other girls?”

“Perhaps more for that reason,” he said, with his voice as kind as his eyes.

“Oh, what shall I do if you go away!” I burst out, partly because I really meant it, and partly because I hoped it might lead him on to say what I wanted so much to hear.  “Suppose you get that consulship at Algiers.”

“I hope I may,” he said quickly.  “A consulship isn’t a very great thing—­but—­it’s a beginning.  I want it badly.”

“I wish I had some influence with the Foreign Secretary,” said I, not telling him that the man actually dislikes me, and looks at me as if I were a toad.  “Of course, he’s Lord Mountstuart’s cousin, and brother-in-law as well, and that makes him seem quite in the family, doesn’t it?  But it isn’t as if I were really related to Lady Mountstuart.  I was never sorry before that Di and I are only step-sisters—­no, not a bit sorry, though her mother had all the money, and brought it to my poor father; but now I wish I were Lady Mountstuart’s niece, and that I had some of the coaxing, ‘girly’ ways Di can put on when she wants to get something out of people.  I’d make the Foreign Secretary give you exactly what you wanted, even if it took you far, far from me.”

With that, he looked at me suddenly, and his face grew slowly red, under the brown.

“You are a very kind Imp,” he said.  “Imp” is the name he invented for me.  I loved to hear him call me by it.

“Kind!” I echoed.  “One isn’t kind when one—­likes—­people.”

I saw by his eyes, then, that he knew.  But I didn’t care.  If only I could make him say the words I longed to hear—­even because he pitied me, because he had found out how I loved him, and because he had really too much of the dark-young-Crusader-knight in him, to break my heart!  I made up my mind that I would take him at his word, quickly, if he gave me the chance; and I would tell Di that he was dreadfully in love with me.  That would make her writhe.

I kept my eyes on him, and I let them tell him everything.  He saw; there was no doubt of that; but he did not say the words I hoped for.  A moment or two he was silent; and then, gazing away towards the door of the ballroom, he spoke very gently, as if I had been a child—­though I am older than Di by three or four years.