“Even so,” begins she hotly.  She pauses, however, as if some thought had struck her.  “Well, let it stay so,” says she.  “If ever I do grow to like you as much as you fancy, why, then you may kiss me—­sometimes.”

“That’s a bargain,” says he.

Again he suppresses a desire to laugh.  It seems to him that she is intensely interesting in some way.

“In the meantime,” says he, with quite a polite air, “may I not kiss you now?”

“No!” says she.  It is the lightest monosyllable, but fraught with much energy.  She tilts the shoulder nearest to him, and peeps at him over it, with a half-merry little air.

She sets Rylton’s mind at work.  Is she only a silly charming child, or an embryo flirt of the first water?  Whatever she is, at all events, she is very new, very fresh—­an innovation!  He continues to look at her.

“Really no?” questions he.

She nods her head.

“And yet you have said ‘Yes’ to everything else?”

She nods her head again.  She nods it even twice.

“Yes, I shall marry you,” says she.

“I may tell my mother?”

Miss Bolton sits up.  A little troubled expression grows within her eyes.

“Oh! must you?” cried she.  “She will be mad.  She won’t let you marry me—­I know she won’t.  She—­hates me.”

“My dear child, why?” Rylton’s tone is shocked.  The very truth in her declaration makes it the more shocking.  And how does she know?  His mother has been sweetness itself to her before the curtain.

“Never mind, I know,” says Tita.  “I feel things.  They come to me.  I don’t blame her.  I’m sure I’m often horrid.  I know that, when I look at other people.  When I look at——­”

She pauses.

“Look at whom?”

“At your cousin.”

“My cousin!”

“Yes!  You love her, don’t you?”

“Love her!” He has turned suddenly as pale as death.  “What do you mean?” asks he in a low voice.

“I love her, any way,” says Tita.  “I think Miss Knollys is the nicest person in all the world.”

“Oh, Margaret?” says he.  He says it involuntarily.  The relief is so great that it compels him to give himself away.

“Why, who else?” says Tita.  “Who did you think I meant?”

“Who could I think?” says he, recovering.  “Even now I am surprised.  Margaret, though very superior in most ways, is not always beloved.”

“But you love her?”

“Oh yes, I do!”

“I am glad of that,” says Tita.  “Because I love her more than anyone I know.  And I have been thinking”—­she looks at him quickly—­“I have been thinking that”—­nervously—­“that when I marry you, Miss Knollys will be my cousin, too, in a sort of way, and that perhaps she will let me call her by her name.  Do you,” anxiously, “think she will?”

“I know she will.”  His answer is terse.  He has barely yet recovered from the shock she had innocently given him.