“Is that as much as to say that I don’t understand you and feel for you?  Perhaps I had better relieve you of my company, Blanche?”

“If you are going to speak to me in that way, perhaps you had!”

“Am I to hear my native country run down and not to say a word in defense of it?”

“Oh! you Scotch people make such a fuss about your native country!”

“We Scotch people! you are of Scotch extraction yourself, and you ought to be ashamed to talk in that way.  I wish you good-morning!”

“I wish you a better temper!”

A minute since the two young ladies had been like twin roses on one stalk.  Now they parted with red cheeks and hostile sentiments and cutting words.  How ardent is the warmth of youth! how unspeakably delicate the fragility of female friendship!

The flock of visitors followed Mrs. Delamayn to the shores of the lake.  For a few minutes after the terrace was left a solitude.  Then there appeared under the porch a single gentleman, lounging out with a flower in his mouth and his hands in his pockets.  This was the strongest man at Swanhaven—­otherwise, Geoffrey Delamayn.

After a moment a lady appeared behind him, walking softly, so as not to be heard.  She was superbly dressed after the newest and the most costly Parisian design.  The brooch on her bosom was a single diamond of resplendent water and great size.  The fan in her hand was a master-piece of the finest Indian workmanship.  She looked what she was, a person possessed of plenty of superfluous money, but not additionally blest with plenty of superfluous intelligence to correspond.  This was the childless young widow of the great ironmaster—­otherwise, Mrs. Glenarm.

The rich woman tapped the strong man coquettishly on the shoulder with her fan.  “Ah! you bad boy!” she said, with a slightly-labored archness of look and manner.  “Have I found you at last?”

Geoffrey sauntered on to the terrace—­keeping the lady behind him with a thoroughly savage superiority to all civilized submission to the sex—­and looked at his watch.

“I said I’d come here when I’d got half an hour to myself,” he mumbled, turning the flower carelessly between his teeth.  “I’ve got half an hour, and here I am.”

“Did you come for the sake of seeing the visitors, or did you come for the sake of seeing Me?”

Geoffrey smiled graciously, and gave the flower another turn in his teeth.  “You.  Of course.”

The iron-master’s widow took his arm, and looked up at him—­as only a young woman would have dared to look up—­with the searching summer light streaming in its full brilliancy on her face.