‘Not formerly?’

’The last time made the most impression, sir.  As last times are apt to do.’

‘Miss Hazel, I have a request to make to you,’ Mr. Falkirk said, after allowing a minute or two of silence to succeed the last remark.

’What, sir?  That I will not sing so loud in the little brown room as to disturb your repose?  I can promise that.’

‘You have not got your horses yet.’

‘No, sir.  I am sure I ought to know so much,’ said the girl with a sigh.

’Rollo will see to it.  You forget, my dear, we have been but a few days here.  Miss Hazel, do you remember the story of the enchanted horse in the Arabian Nights?’

’With great clearness, sir.  In everything but his appearance it was just the horse I should like.’

’Just the horse I am afraid of.  The cavalier turned a screw and the lady was gone.  I request that you will mount nobody’s steed, not even your own, without consulting me first that I may make sure all is safe.  It is still more true than it was the other night that I require your co-operation to discharge my trust.’

‘Why, of course I should consult you, sir!’ she said, with some surprise.

’That is all, Miss Hazel.  Rollo will give his oversight to the woods.  Only don’t engage yourself to anybody for a ride till you have consulted me.  Do you agree to that form of precaution-taking?’

’Certainly, sir.  I am sure I referred Mr. Morton to you at once,’ said Miss Hazel, drinking her tea.  And Mr. Falkirk, in a silence that was meditative if not gloomy, lay and watched her.  It was a little book room where they were, perhaps the largest on that floor, however; a man’s room.  The walls all books and maps, with deer horns, a small telescope and pistols for a few of its varieties.  Yet it was cheerful too, and in perfect order; and Mr. Falkirk was lying on a comfortable chintz couch.  Papers and writing materials and books had been displaced from one end of the table for Hazel’s tea.  That over, the young lady brought a foot-cushion to the side of Mr. Falkirk’s couch and established herself there, much refreshed.

’It is great fun to come to tea with you, sir!  Now, may I go on with business? or are you too tired?’

‘Suppose I say I am too tired?’ growled Mr. Falkirk, ’what will you do?’

Hazel glanced up at him from under her eyelashes.

‘Wait, sir.  I am learning to wait, beautifully!’ she answered with great demureness.  ’Then suppose I go and tell Mrs. Saddler about my room?’

‘Go along,’ said Mr. Falkirk.  ’Give your orders.  You had better send up to the house for some furniture.  You’ll make Mrs. Saddler happy at any rate.  I am not so sure about Gotham.  But Gotham has too easy a life in general.’

They had a lively time of it in the other part of the house for the next half day.  And so had Mr. Falkirk in his, for that matter:  the sweet voice and laugh and song, somehow, penetrated to his study as grosser sounds might have failed to do.  It was towards tea-time again when Wych Hazel presented herself in the study on the tips of her toes, and subsiding once more to her cushion glanced up as before at Mr. Falkirk.