How friendly might be the relations between himself and Keswick, when the latter should read his letter about the Candy affair, and should know that he was in this house with Miss March, Lawrence could not say; but he did not allude to this point in his companion’s remarks.  “I do not think,” he said, “that you have any reason to object to my endeavoring to win Miss March.  Even if she accepts me, it will be to the advantage of your cousin, because if he still hopes to obtain her, the sooner he knows he cannot do so, the better it will be for him.  My course is perfectly fair.  I am aware that the lady is not at present engaged to any one, and I am endeavoring to induce her to engage herself to me.  If I fail, then I step aside.”

“Entirely aside, and out of the way?” asked Mrs Null.

“Entirely,” answered Lawrence.

“Well,” said Annie, leaning back in her chair, in which before she had been sitting very upright, “you have, at last, given me a good deal of your confidence; almost as much as I gave you.  Some of the things you say I believe, others I don’t.”

Lawrence was annoyed, but he would not allow himself to get angry.  “I am not accustomed to being disbelieved,” he said, gravely.  “It is a very unusual experience, I assure you.  Which of my statements do you doubt?”

“I don’t believe,” said Annie, “that you will give her up if she rejects you while you are here.  You are too wilful.  You will follow her, and try again.”

“Mrs Null,” said Lawrence, “I do not feel justified in speaking to a third person of these things, but this is a peculiar case, and, therefore, I assure you, and request you to believe me, that if Miss March shall now positively refuse me, I shall feel convinced that her affections are already occupied, and that I have no right to press my suit any longer.”

“Would you like to begin now?” said Annie.  “She is coming down stairs.”

“You are entirely too matter-of-fact,” said Lawrence, smiling in spite of himself, and, in a moment, Roberta entered the room.

If the young lady in the high-backed rocking-chair had any idea of giving Mr Croft and Miss March an opportunity of expressing their sentiments toward each other, she took no immediate steps to do so; for she gently rocked herself; she talked about the novel she had been reading; she blamed Miss March for staying so long in her room on such a beautiful afternoon; and she was the primary cause of a conversation among the three upon the differences between New York weather and that of Virginia; and this continued until old Mrs Keswick joined the party, and changed the conversation to the consideration of the fact that a fertilizer agent, a pill man, or a blackmailer would find out a person’s whereabouts, even if he were attending the funeral of his grandmother on a desert island.