“Mrs. Bethune may stay with me with pleasure,” says Tita.  “Why not?”

“Why not?" Lady Rylton pauses as if choking.  She had thought to lower this girl into the very dust, and revenge herself on Maurice at the same time by her shameful revelation.  “You do not care, then?” says she, bitterly disappointed.

Tita does not answer her.  Suddenly her young thoughts have gone backwards, and all at once she remembers many things.  The poison has entered into her.  In a moment, as it were, she is back in that dim conservatory where Maurice (he has never been “he” or “him” to her, as happier girls, who love more and are more beloved, would have styled him)—­where Maurice had asked her to marry him.

Now, in some strange fashion, her memory grows alive and compels her to remember how he looked and spoke that night—­that night of his proposal to her, when she had asked him if he loved his cousin.

There had been a queer, indescribable change in his face—­a sudden pallor, a start!  She had thought nothing of it then, but now it comes back to her.  She had meant Margaret—­Margaret whom she loves; but he—­who had he meant?

Really it doesn’t matter so much after all, this story of Lady Rylton’s.  Maurice can go his way and she hers—­that was arranged!  But, for all that, it does seem rather mean that he should have married her, telling her nothing of this.

“Care! why should I care?” says she suddenly, Lady Rylton’s last words clinging to her brain, in spite of all its swift wanderings during the last sixty seconds.

“Such an admirable indifference would almost lead me to believe that you had been born of good parentage,” says Lady Rylton, cold with disappointed revenge.

“I was born of excellent parentage——­” Tita is beginning, when the sound of footsteps slowly mounting the stairs of the veranda outside comes to them.

A second later Mrs. Gower shows himself.

CHAPTER XIII.

HOW A YOUNG AND LOVELY NATURE TAKES A SHOCK MOST CRUELLY ADMINISTERED. AND HOW A DOWAGER TAKES A NEW NAME AS A DIRECT INSULT.  AND HOW TITA DECLINES TO PROMISE ANYTHING.

He stands at the open window looking in.  All at once Tita knows and feels that Margaret sent him to rescue her from captivity.

“Lady Rylton,” calls he, “won’t you come out?  The evening is a perfect dream—­a boon and a blessing to men, like those pens, you know.”

The elder Lady Rylton answers him.  She leans forward, a charming smile on her wonderfully youthful features.

“No.  No, thanks.”  She shakes her pretty, fair head at Gower in a delightfully coquettish fashion.  Dear boy!  How sweet is it of him to come and fetch her for a little stroll among the hollyhocks.  “I can’t go out now.  Not to-night, Randal!”

“Oh! er—­so sorry!  But——­” He looks at Tita.  It is impossible not to understand that the Lady Rylton he had intended to take for a little stroll in the calm, delightful evening, had been the younger Lady Rylton.  “Well, if your—­er—­mother—­won’t come, won’t you?" asks he, now addressing Tita distinctly.