Cecil a rival!  Much as she wished to disbelieve it, corroborative evidence, unheeded at the time, now recurred with such startling distinctness that she marvelled at her own previous blindness.  Still, Bluebell was not cured.  That he cared most for herself she continued to believe, though Cecil’s fortune might have tempted him away.  Plan after plan for obtaining an explanation was discarded as unfeasible; and, at last, Bluebell, in despair, hid her face in her hands, and burst into the unrestrained grief of the young.

She was disturbed by a slight rustling in the bushes, and, looking up, beheld Jack Vavasour in an attitude of confusion and consternation, apparently meditating flight.

“I beg your pardon, Miss Leigh; I was going away before you saw me.  I’ll go at once.  My darling Bluebell, what is the matter?”

“I don’t know,” said she, relieved to see it was “only Jack.”  “I am very hot and—­miserable.”

Vavasour sat down, and tried in his honest and unsophisticated way to console her.  “Was there any one he could pitch into for her?  He would do anything she wished, etc., if she would only say what was vexing her.”

Bluebell could hardly help laughing, but was so unaccustomed of late to sympathy, that she felt half tempted to take him into council, and confide her misplaced attachment and perplexities.

It was rather heartless, knowing his sentiments; but callousness to the pangs of a lightly won and unvalued heart is not uncommon in Love’s annals.

However, he was too precipitate for her.

“Bluebell,” he began, blushing rather, and looking, as she thought, almost handsome in his eagerness, “do you remember what I said to you the other night when we were looking at the Northern Lights?”

“I remember some absurd chaff.”

“It wasn’t,” said Jack, with emphasis suited to the solemnity of the declaration.  “I meant every word of it; and now I say, like the Beast in the fairy tale—­’Beauty, will you marry me?’”

“And she always said,—­’No, Beast,’” said Bluebell, laughing; “and then he went away, ‘very sorrowful.’”

“Yes, but that’s the difference.  I shan’t go away, or let you, till you say ‘Yes.’”

“I couldn’t, really,” said she, treating it as a joke.  “So we shall be starved to death, and covered up by birds, like the babes in the wood.”

“No; we will live happy ever afterwards,” passing an arm round her waist with an air of proprietorship.  “Shall I tell Colonel Rolleston to-night?”

“Oh, this is too serious,” cried Bluebell, energetically freeing herself.  “If you really want an answer to such stuff, most decidedly ‘No.’”

Jack, in furious mortification, for he saw she was now thoroughly in earnest, poured forth reproaches, accusing her of coquetry and purposely deceiving him, caring not if his words were just or unjust; and Bluebell’s conscience was not altogether guiltless.  Perhaps her own disappointment made her better understand his; for she waited patiently till the torrent of words had a little subsided, and then, laying her hand persuasively on his arm, said with gentle archness,—­