She looked forward to marrying him to Cecil, as the best chance of relieving his pecuniary difficulties and reforming his unsteadiness.

Captain Du Meresq had stayed with them for six weeks some time ago, when he and Cecil became inseparable companions, and it was then that the idea had dawned upon her.  She would not openly discuss it with her brother—­that would have too much the appearance of a plot:  but her lively satisfaction at the prospect was apparent enough, and Bertie knew her co-operation would not be wanting.

He had thought of it more than once.  What chance had he not calculated to get him through his sea of difficulties; but a thousand a year alone seemed scarcely sufficient temptation to matrimony, to which he did not seriously incline.  Indeed, his warm impressionable nature was not the temperament of a fortune-hunter.

He was attracted with Cecil, and got rather fond of her in the six weeks he had been trying to make her in love with him, not with any mercenary view, but because such was his usual custom with girls.

But he was afflicted with a keen eye for beauty, and Cecil was plain to most eyes, and too colourless for his taste, though she possessed a lovely figure, thorough-bred little head, and a pale, intelligent, expressive face.

Bluebell’s lilies and roses and Hebe-like contour caught his eye in a moment, of which Cecil felt an instinctive conviction; but though, with a woman’s keenness, underrating no point of attraction in her friend, she considered her wanting in style, which deficiency she dwelt on now with secret satisfaction.  For though not in the least anxious to monopolize general admiration, that of Bertie Du Meresq was unfortunately a sensitive point with Cecil, for that six weeks had been the intensest period of her life—­the dawning of “love’s young dream.”

She had never met him since childhood till then, when they were thrown together with the intimacy of near connexions.  There was not, of course, the slightest real relationship, but Bertie jestingly called her his niece, perhaps, to establish a right of chaperonage.

He used to make her come down to breakfast en Amazone, and took her the most enchanting rides in that Seductive April weather.  Her equestrian experience previously had been limited to steady macadamizing on the roads.  Bertie took her as the crow flies, never pulled a fence, but merely gave her a lead, and Cecil, who had plenty of nerve, exulted in the new excitement.  The farmers might not have thought it a very orthodox month for this amusement; but hunting was scarcely over, though the copses were filled with primroses, and violets scented the hedgerows; the birds sang as they only do when the great business of their year is commencing.  And then she had such a mount, a perfect hunter of her quasi-uncle’s.  It never refused, and took its fences with such ease a child might have sat it.