“How inhospitable of you to desert your friends so soon!” says she.  “Why, you never come up till two, do you?—­at least, so you tell me.”

“You will catch cold if you stay like that,” says he.

It is a somewhat irrelevant remark; but, for the first time in all his knowledge of her, the tender charm that is her own becomes clear to him.  It seems to him that she is a new being—­one he has never seen before; and, with this fresh knowledge, his anger towards her grows stronger.

“I!—­in this weather!  Why, it is hardly chilly even yet, in spite of the rain; and, besides, I have this fire!” She catches his hand, and draws him towards the hearthrug.  “I am sure you have something to say to me,” says she.  “Come and sit by the fire, and tell me all about it.”

“It is nothing, really,” says Rylton, resisting her pretty efforts to push him into a luxurious lounging chair.  “It is only a question about your cousin.”

He leans his elbow on the chimney-piece, and looks down at her—­a dainty fairy lying now in the bosom of some soft pink cushions, with her legs crossed and her toes towards the fire.  She has clasped her arms behind her head.

“About Minnie?”

“No.”

His heart hardens again.  Is this duplicity on her part?  How small, how innocent, how girlish, how—­reluctantly this—­beautiful she looks! and yet——­

“About Tom, then?”

“About Mr. Hescott”—­coldly—­“yes.”

“What! you don’t like him?” questions Tita, abandoning her lounging attitude, and leaning towards him.

“So far as he is concerned,” with increasing coldness, “I am quite indifferent to him; it is of you I think.”

“Of me!  And why of me?  Why should you think of me?”

“I hardly know,” somewhat bitterly; “except that it is perhaps better that I should criticise your conduct than—­other people.”

“I don’t know what you mean!” says Tita slowly.

Her charming face loses suddenly all its vivacity; she looks a little sad, a little forlorn.

“There is very little to know,” says Rylton hurriedly, touched by her expression.

“But you said—­you spoke of my conduct!"

“Well, and is there nothing to be said of that?  This cousin——­” He stops, and then goes on abruptly:  “Why does he call you Titania?”

“Oh, it is an old name for me!” She looks at him, and, leaning back again in her chair, bursts out laughing.  She has flung her arms over her head again, and now looks at him from under one of them with a mischievous smile.  “Is that the whole?” says she.  “He used to call me that years ago.  He used to say I was like a fairy queen.”

“Used he?”

Rylton’s face is untranslatable.

“Yes.  I was the smallest child alive, I do believe.”  She springs to her feet, and goes up to Rylton in a swaying, graceful little fashion.  “I’m not so very big even now, am I?” says she.