Rather taken back, he answered evasively.  But the ice once broken, she was not to be turned from her purpose, and repeated, as if it were a stereotyped form of words she had been practising, “I only wish to ask one single thing, are you engaged to Cecil?”

Du Meresq was no coxcomb.  He was distressed at the repressed agitation in Bluebell’s voice, her hueless face, and the hopeless look in eyes he remembered so beaming, and for the moment heartily wished he had never seen her.

“How young she looks, with her lap full of flowers.  Like an unhappy child,” thought he remorsefully.  “I must tell her the truth; she’ll soon get over it.”

Very gently he took her hand, and said, gravely,—­“I asked Cecil yesterday to marry me, and she said yes.”

Bluebell staggered to her feet, with perhaps a sudden impulse of flight, but so unsteadily that Du Meresq involuntarily threw a supporting arm round her.  At that moment Lola, in search of blackberries, and herself concealed by the bush she was rifling, peeped through the brambles, and remained a petrified and curious observer.

Bluebell, struggling for composure, tried to speak, but the effort only precipitated an irrepressible flood of tears, and Du Meresq, grieved and self-reproachful, in his attempts to console her, used the fatal words that Lola afterwards repeated to Cecil.  The child escaped without her presence being detected.

Bluebell’s emotion had passed over like a storm that clears the atmosphere.  It left her calm and cold, and only anxious to be away from Du Meresq.

There is a bracing power in knowing the worst.  He had gained her affections without the most distant intention of matrimony, and resentment and shame restored her to composure.

She turned her large child-like eyes on him with mute reproach.

“You should have told me before,” were her first articulate words.  “No wonder Cecil hated me when you were pretending to care for me behind her back.”

Bertie murmured,—­“There was no pretence in the matter.”

“Then why do you marry Cecil?” asked Bluebell, with the most uncompromising directness.  “Is it because she is rich?”

“Confound it,” thought Du Meresq; “I trust she won’t suggest that to Cecil.”

“Can’t I love you both?” cried he, somewhat irritated; and just then Miss Prosody and her brood appeared in sight.

“I return you my share,” exclaimed Bluebell, breaking abruptly from him, and, running down the path, joined the governess and children.

Du Meresq had rather a bad quarter of an hour over the pipe which this sentimental episode had extinguished; but he could not regret, in the face of his new engagement, the finale of a past and now inopportune love-affair.

Bluebell did not come down to dinner that day nor see Du Meresq again; but afterwards, Mrs. Rolleston, who was in nobody’s confidence, and had the uneasy conviction that something was going desperately wrong, came into her room.