And so Cecil passed through her first “baptism of fire” alone and unsuspected; but time had softened much of her resentment ere they met again.

CHAPTER III.

GENTLE ANNIE.

The time I’ve lost in wooing,
In watching and pursuing
The light that lies
In woman’s eyes,
Has been my heart’s undoing. 
—­Moore.

“Bluebell,” said little Lola, bursting into the nursery, where Freddy, rather a tyrant in his affections, had insisted on her singing him to sleep, “Ma says you have got to dine down to-night, and Miss Prosody,

too.  Won’t she be in a way, for her white muslin never came home from the wash, and she had begun altering the barege; so I asked Felda to tell her,” said Lola, diplomatically.  “Do you know Bertie has come?” (His nieces never prefaced his name with the formality of uncle.) “Oh of course, you must have seen him at the Rink.  Do you like him?  He is sure to like you, at first, at any rate,” said Lola, who apparently, like other lookers-on saw most of the game.  “And don’t tell, but I believe he hates Miss Prosody.”

“Why?” asked Bluebell, absently.

“Well, one day he was whispering to Cecil, with their heads very near together.  Miss Prosody was looking for a book in a recess behind the door, close to them; but they never saw her till she moved away, and I heard Bertie mutter something about an ‘inquisitive old devil.’  But don’t tell, mind.  There’s the bell; I must go to tea,” Exit Lola, and Bluebell flew off with some alacrity to her bed-room to prepare.

“Bluebell,” cried Cecil, opening the intervening door, “can I lend you anything?” It pleased her to supply her friend’s deficiencies of toilet when a sudden summons to a domestic field-day had been issued.

“Is it a party?” said the other.  “I have only my eternal black-net dress.”

“Just Mr. Vavasour and Captain Deveril,” both in her father’s regiment; they never either of them alluded to Bertie.  “Here are some fixings for it,” returning with a lapful of silver acorns and oak leaves, “unless you would prefer butter-cups.  What a thing it is to have a complexion like yours, that everything goes with,”—­and Cecil looked with half envy at the girl, whose blue eyes were bluer, and hair and cheeks brighter, than usual, as she chattered away with a vivacity, of which, perhaps, the nattering glances of Captain Du Meresq may have been the secret spring.

Bluebell hadn’t the slightest idea of assuming the demure demeanour of a governess in society; the Rollestons had been her great friends before, and did not treat her as if she was in any altered position; not so, however, Miss Prosody, who would have reduced her to the status of a nursery-maid had it been in her power.

That austere virgin was talking, or rather listening, in a sympathetic manner to Colonel Rolleston as the girls entered the room; but her eye had taken in every detail of Miss Leigh’s costume, and disapprovingly remarked the silver oak leaves that festooned the black-net dress, and Maltese cross and bracelets that accompanied it, all of which she well knew belonged to Cecil.