Next morning they all met at breakfast as usual.  No allusion was made to her approaching departure.  Afterwards, she attended to Freddy’s nominal lessons, packed her slender wardrobe, and then remained in her own room, for the first time unwilling to go downstairs without an invitation.  And yet she grudged every hour that passed and brought the separation nearer.  She heard Bertie whistling about the house, so she would most likely see him before starting—­probably only at luncheon, though, which was the children’s dinner.  A minute before the bell rang Bluebell descended, and came full on Du Meresq in an angle of the staircase.  She stopped involuntarily.  He was beside her with a smothered exclamation of endearment, and an eager hand seeking hers.  Had she dreamt it?  The face was impassive, the hand dropped, and a careless voice was saying,—­

“Are you really going home this afternoon, Miss Leigh?”

At the same instant she observed Cecil’s upturned eyes in the hall below them.  So she had the felicity of eating a cutlet in the presence of her love, but received no aliment for her heart-hunger.  Du Meresq was teazing his nieces, and did not add much to the general conversation, but the others made up for it, and, when they addressed Bluebell, did so in a particularly cheery tone, as to a nervous, fanciful girl, not to be encouraged or noticed in her blue fits.  She had thought of walking home late in the afternoon, still hoping that something might bring about some last words with Du Meresq, or that he might even contrive to join her on the road; but Mrs. Rolleston, in the tone of one proposing a pleasure, said she would drive her back herself, and that the sleigh was ordered in half-an-hour.

Bluebell, goaded to mild exasperation, glanced hastily to where Bertie had been sitting, but he had left the room unperceived.

The sleigh was at the door, so also was Captain Du Meresq, smoking an after-luncheon cigar.  I grieve to say my heroine displayed not a particle of self-respect as, pale and dejected, she seated herself by Mrs. Rolleston.  Indeed, the blue eyes were beginning to swim, when they were dried by a flash of indignation at the parting words of Du Meresq.  He merely raised his hat, without attempting to shake hands, and said, in a jesting tone,—­“Au revoir, Miss Bluebell.  I hope you will be a comfort to your mamma.”

As the jingle of the bells died away in the distance, Cecil felt a load removed from her heart.  Bluebell had become an object of uncomfortable surmises, and her absence was an inexpressible relief.

She had a fair field now, and Bertie all to herself, and did not intend to spoil the present with tormenting suspicions of the past.

“Probably he may have flattered Bluebell at odd times, and turned her head; but Bertie, though he will talk nonsense to anybody who will listen to him, cares for something more than a pretty face.  He will forget her directly she is out of sight, for there really is nothing in her.”