All the same she crept into the house, feeling very underhand and uncomfortable.  None of the party had returned, so reprieved for the present she went up to the nursery.

Freddy was roaring on his back, he had just thrown “Peep-of-Day” at the nurse’s head, which had been unwisely offered to him as a substitute for his favourite trumpet, when its excruciating blasts become too unbearable.

“Oh, I’m sure I’m glad you have come back, miss, for I don’t know how to abide that wearyin’ child, as don’t know what a whipping is.  Here’s your governess, sir, as will put you in the corner.”

“Hold your tongue, you fool!” cried Freddy with supreme contempt.

The suaviter in modo was, indeed, the only treatment allowed in that nursery.  Bluebell retreated with a highly-coloured scrap-book to the window, which she feigned complete absorption in.  Freddy glanced at it out of the tail of his eye.

“Show me that, Boobell.”

“I don’t know, Freddy,” said the girl, feeling some slight moral coercion incumbent on her.  “Do you think you will call nurse a fool again?”

“She shouldn’t bother,” said the infant, confidentially, climbing into her lap, but declining to commit himself to any pledges of good behaviour.  “Show me the book.”

Half-an-hour after, Mrs. Rolleston looking in, saw a pretty little picture—­the old nurse was nodding in a rocking-chair.  Bluebell’s fair young face was bending over Freddy, seated on her lap, with as arm round her neck, his cherubic visage beaming with interest as he listened to the classic tale of “Three Wishes.”  It was easier to her to continue the recital, while a dread of being questioned prevented her looking up.

“Bluebell is telling Freddy such a beautiful fairy story,” said Mrs. Rolleston, to some one who had followed her to the nursery.

“I wish she would tell fairy stories to me,” said Bertie.

CHAPTER VI.

VISITORS.

In aught that from me lures thine eyes
My jealousy has trial;
The lightest cloud across the skies
Has darkness for the dial. 
—­Lord Lytton.

Bluebell had no difficulty in preserving silence about the Sunday’s escapade.  It never occurred to Mrs. Rolleston to enquire what time she had returned, and an evasive answer to Cecil was all that it entailed.  But she was very much perplexed by the change in Captain Du Meresq’s manner.  The cold civility recommended by Miss Opie seemed all on his side.  Nothing but good-humoured indifference was apparent in his manner.  Their acquaintance did not seem to have progressed further than the first evening; indeed, it had rather retrograded; and she could almost imagine she had dreamt the tender speeches he had lavished on her in the Humber woods.