Bertie, who had been speaking without motive, was taken by surprise as the sense of her impulsive words flashed on his brain.

“My darling Cecil!”

Cecil, the colour of a carnation, and expiring with embarrassment, raised her eyes, and encountered his fixed on her with a fond, sad, but not responsive expression.  If shame could kill, she had received her coup de grace that moment.  He had understood, and yet said nothing.

The most rapturous gratitude on his part would hardly have reconciled her to herself; not to be met half-way was ignominious rejection.

It had all been the work of one moment, and relief came in the next with the entrance of Colonel Rolleston.  Cecil, feeling as if delivered from a spell, got out of the room, and entrenched herself in her own, where her thoughts became almost unendurable.

In horror at what she had done, her first wish was never to see Bertie again.  Every particle of pleasure in his society must now be over since that one mad, unguarded sentence.

“I might have known,” thought she, bitterly, “that that false, caressing manner of his never meant anything.  I have seen it with a dozen girls—­even Bluebell,”—­here she winced; “and yet in the face of all probability I must needs believe myself more to him than any one, because it suits him to make me the receptacle of his worries.  Well, he is disinterested, at any rate, since all my money has no more attractions for him than myself.”

A stormy hour did poor Cecil pass with her wounded pride, when she was interrupted by Lola, the Mercury of the establishment, who came to tell her that “dinner would be an hour earlier, because Bertie was going away.”

Cecil received the intelligence very shortly, and nipped in the bud her evident intention of lingering by declaring herself “busy,” which that astute young person, seeing no signs of employment, interpreted as “cross.”

“I must face it,” thought she, as the last peal of the gong jarred on her nerves.  She descended just in time to see Colonel and Mrs. Rolleston disappear into the dining-room.  Du Meresq, who had waited, eagerly placed her hand under his arm, and drew her back a moment.

“Cecil, where have you been hiding all this afternoon?”

I suppose he had the key to the answer, for the changing hues of her complexion, in which pride struggled with confusion, was the only one he got.

“You utter little goose!” said Bertie, emphatically, crushing the hand under his arm as they entered the dining-room.  Curious to relate, Cecil scarcely felt so ashamed as she had an hour ago.  Not a chance would she give him, though, of speaking a syllable in private; and very soon after dinner he departed, taking leave of Cecil before all the rest, with no more distinguishing mark of affection than a long hand-clasp, which seemed as if it would never unlock.

“Only his odious flirting manner!” said Cecil to herself; but she did not think so, and felt a good deal less self-contempt than she had before.