“There is another way; I could easily stop scandal.”

“Everard, what do you mean!”

“I mean marriage,” he replied deliberately.

“Surely, boy, you must be dreaming!  You have only seen her for an hour or two.  I don’t believe in these sudden attachments.”

Perhaps she here thought of one (her own) as sudden, which had not ended happily.

“Everard, don’t do anything rashly.  You know you are very fickle and considered a lady-killer—­be merciful to my poor little Sybylla, I pray.  It is just one of your passing fancies.  Don’t wile her passionate young heart away and then leave her to pine and die.”

“I don’t think she is that sort,” he replied laughingly.

“No, she would not die, but would grow into a cynic and sceptic, which is the worst of fates.  Let her alone.  Flirt as much as you will with society belles who understand the game, but leave my country maiden alone.  I hope to mould her into a splendid character yet.”

“But, Helen, supposing I am in earnest at last, you don’t think I’d make her a bad old hubby, do you?”

“She is not the girl for you.  You are not the man who could ever control her.  What I say may not be complimentary but it is true.  Besides, she is not seventeen yet, and I do not approve of romantic young girls throwing themselves into matrimony.  Let them develop their womanhood first.”

“Then I expect I had better hide my attractions under a bushel during the remainder of my stay at Caddagat?”

“Yes.  Be as nice to the child as you like, but mind, none of those little ladies’-man attentions with which it is so easy to steal—­”

I waited to hear no more, but, brimming over with a mixture of emotions, tore through the garden and into the old orchard.  Bees were busy, and countless bright-coloured butterflies flitted hither and thither, sipping from hundreds of trees, white or pink with bloom—­their beauty was lost upon me.  I stood ankle-deep in violets, where they had run wild under a gnarled old apple-tree, and gave way to my wounded vanity.

“Little country maiden, indeed!  There’s no need for him to bag his attractions up.  If he exerted himself to the utmost of his ability, he could not make me love him.  I’m not a child.  I saw through him in the first hour.  There’s not enough in him to win my love.  I’ll show him I think no more of him than of the caterpillars on the old tree there.  I’m not a booby that will fall in love with every gussie I see.  Bah, there’s no fear of that!  I hate and detest men!”

“I suppose you are rehearsing some more airs to show off with tonight,” sneered a voice behind me.

“No, I’m realisticing; and how dare you thrust your obnoxious presence before me when I wish to be alone!  Haven’t I often shown—­”

“While a girl is disengaged, any man who is her equal has the right to pay his addresses to her if he is in earnest,” interrupted Mr Hawden.  It was he who stood before me.