Cecil and he were out sleighing most afternoons, and Bluebell was thrown on nursery and school-room for companionship—­insipid pabulum to the vanity of a young lady in her first glimpse of conquest, and who believed she had stricken down a quarry worthy of her bow.  Having nothing to distract her, she considered the problem exhaustively from morning till night, and, if she were not in love with him before, she had got him into her head now, if not into her heart.  His being so much with Cecil did not strike her as any clue to the mystery.  They were relations, of course, or nearly the same thing; there was no flirting in their matter-of-fact intercourse.

Cecil found her one afternoon reading over the bed-room fire, in a somewhat desponding attitude.  Miss Rolleston had just come in from a drive, her slight form shrouded in sealskins, an air of brightness and vivacity replacing her usual rather languid manner.

“You wouldn’t think it was snowing from my cloak,” cried she.  “It is though—­quite a heavy fall, if you can call anything so light heavy.  We were quite white when we came in, but it shakes off without wetting.”

“It won’t be very good sleighing, then, to-morrow, and the wind is getting up, too.”

“And what have you been doing, Bluebell?”

“I walked with the children and Miss Prosody in the Queen’s Park,” said the latter, rather dolefully.

“And it was very cold and stupid, I suppose?” said Cecil, kindly.  “Come down to the drawing-room and try some duets.”

There were two or three visitors below and Bertie, and some tea was coming in.  They were looking at a picture of Cecil’s just returned from being mounted as a screen.  It was a group of brilliant autumn leaves—­the gorgeous maple, with its capricious hues, an arrow-shaped leaf, half red, half green, like a parrot’s feather, contrasting with another “spotted like the pard,” and then one blood-red.  The collecting of them had been an interest to the children in their daily walks, and Cecil had arranged them with artistic effect.

One of the visitors was a rather pretty girl, whom Bluebell had known formerly.  She gave her, however, only a distant bow, while she answered with the greatest animation any observation of Captain Du Meresq’s.  This young lady was to be one of the sleighing party next day, and, as far as she could admit such a humiliating fact, was trying to convey to him, that she was as yet unappropriated for any particular sleigh.

“Who is to drive you, Miss Rolleston?” asked she, suspecting, from his backwardness in coming forward, that the object of her intentions might be engaged there.

“I am going in the last sleigh, with Major Fane.  We take the luncheon and pay the turnpikes.  He is Vice-President this time.”

“By-the-bye, Du Meresq,” said the Colonel, rather exercised to find a lady of the party without a swain, “whom have you asked?”