‘Sho, Sir George,’ she said, ’how silly you must think me to proffer you advice; and with an air as if the sky were falling?  Do you forgive me?’

‘I forgive you that,’ Sir George answered.  But, poor fellow, he winced under her sudden change of tone.

‘That is well,’ she said confidently.  ’And there again, do you know you are changed; you would not have said that a week ago.  I have most certainly improved your manners.’

Sir George made an effort to answer her in the same strain.  ’Well, I should improve,’ he said.  ’I come very regularly to school.  Do you know how many days we have sat here, ma belle?’

A faint colour tinged her cheek.  ’If I do not, that dreadful Mr. Thomasson does,’ she answered.  ’I believe he never lets me go out of his sight.  And for what you say about days—­what are days, or even weeks, when it is a question of reforming a rake, Sir George?  Who was it you named to me yesterday,’ she continued archly, but with her eyes on the toe of her shoe which projected from her dress, ’who carried the gentleman into the country when he had lost I don’t know how many thousand pounds?  And kept him there out of harm’s way?’

‘It was Lady Carlisle,’ Sir George answered drily; ’and the gentleman was her husband.’

It was Julia’s turn to draw figures in the dust of the roadway, which she did very industriously; and the two were silent for quite a long time, while some one’s heart bumped as if it would choke her.  At length—­’He was not quite ruined, was he?’ she said, with elaborate carelessness; her voice was a little thick—­perhaps by reason of the bumping.

‘Lord, no!’ said Sir George.  ‘And I am, you see.’

‘While I am not your wife!’ she answered; and flashed her eyes on him in sudden petulance; and then, ’Well, perhaps if my lady had her choice—­to be wife to a rake can be no bed of roses, Sir George!  While to be wife to a ruined rake—­perhaps to be wife to a man who, if he were not ruined, would treat you as the dirt beneath his feet, beneath his notice, beneath—­’

She did not seem to be able to finish the sentence, but rose choking, her face scarlet.  He rose more slowly.  ‘Lord!’ he said humbly, looking at her in astonishment, ’what has come to you suddenly?  What has made you angry with me, child?’

‘Child?’ she exclaimed.  ‘Am I a child?  You play with me as if I were!’

‘Play with you?’ Sir George said, dumfounded; he was quite taken aback by her sudden vehemence.  ’My dear girl, I cannot understand you.  I am not playing with you.  If any one is playing, it is you.  Sometimes—­I wonder whether you hate me or love me.  Sometimes I am happy enough to think the one; sometimes—­I think the other—­’

‘It has never struck you,’ she said, speaking with her head high, and in her harshest and most scornful tone, ’that I may do neither the one nor the other, but be pleased to kill my time with you—­since I must stay here until my lawyer has done his business?’