sweetness if you but turn aside for a moment, so she seemed to have altered, even since her guardian’s last look.  The broad gipsy hanging from her hand, her long eyelashes drooped,—­so she stood.  Mr. Falkirk looked and took the effect of all this in a glance two seconds long, during which, something held his tongue.  Then as his eye caught the figure that entered following her, it darted towards him a look of sudden surprise and suspicion.  Than changed, however, almost as soon, and his eyes came back to his ward.  But there is no doubt Mr. Falkirk scowled.

‘So, Miss Hazel,’ he began, in his usual manner, ’you found you could not manage other people’s carriages last night?’

’Not the right ones, sir.  Will you ask Mr. Rollo to sit down, Mr. Falkirk?  It is due to me that he should hear all I have to say.’

‘It is not due to anybody that you should say it standing,’ said Rollo, wheeling up into convenient position the easiest chair that the room contained.  She made him a slight sign of acknowledgement, but yielded only so far as to lay her hand on the chair back.  Probably it was pleasant to touch something.  Rollo stepped back to the mantlepiece and stood there, but not touching it or anything.

‘It appears to me, Miss Hazel,’ said the recumbent master of the house, ‘that the invitation must come from you.’

‘I have not been invited myself, sir, yet.’

’I do not recollect inviting you to be seated yesterday, my dear; is to-day different from yesterday?’

’Unless I have forgotten the frown which welcomed me then, sir.  I suppose you have but a faint idea of the looming up of your brows just now.’

‘What?’ said Mr. Falkirk.  ’Don’t you know, Miss Hazel, a man’s brows are not within his range of vision? and I deny that he is responsible for them.  Am I frowning now?’

‘Not quite so portentously, sir.’

’Then you need not stand so particularly, need you?  I wonder, if I looked so fierce, how Rollo dared to offer you the civility of a chair in my presence; but people are different.’

‘But I cannot sit there,’ she said, with a glance towards the bringer of the chair, as she passed by its reposeful depths.  ’Not now.  If Mr. Rollo will make himself comfortable in his own way, I will in mine.’  And Hazel brought a foot cushion to the couch and sat down there; a little turned away from the third member of the party; who however did not change his position.

‘Is there business?’ said Mr. Falkirk glancing from one to the other.

The girl gave him a swift glance of wonder.

’You used to think it was business, sir, to know what had become of me.  Did you sleep well last night, Mr. Falkirk?’

‘Why should I, any more than you?’ said Mr. Falkirk in his old fashion of growling.  ’Day is the proper time for sleeping, in the fashionable world.’

It made her restless—­this keeping off the subject of which her thoughts were full.  Didn’t he mean to ask any questions?