‘Hazel, my dear, you had need to be a saint!’ Mme. Lasalle whispered.  ’It is—­absolutely—­outrageous; something not to be borne!’

‘But the fun of it is,’ broke in Kitty again, ’that we all took it for granted it was mere lover-like devotion!  And now, behold, c’est tout au contraire!’

Since the day of the ride it had been war to the knife with Kitty Fisher.

‘Kitty!  Kitty!’ said Mr. Kingsland in soft deprecation.

‘My dear,’ Mme. Lasalle went on mockingly, ’perhaps he would not approve of your eating so much ice.  Hadn’t you better take care?’

’Must we ask him about everything now, before we can have you?’ cried Josephine, in great indignation, quite unfeigned, though possibly springing from a double root.  ’O, was it he came for you to Greenbush?’

But with that Hazel roused herself.

‘You had better ask him anything you want answered,’ she said.  ‘I think he has quite a genius that way.’

’What way?  O, you know, friends, perhaps, she likes it.  What way, Hazel?’

‘Does he speak soft when he gives his orders?’ said Kitty Fisher.  ‘Or does he use his ordinary tone?’

‘And oh, Miss Kennedy,’ said little Molly Seaton, ’isn’t it awfully nice to have such a handsome man tell you what to do?’

Now Hazel had been at her wits’ end, feeling as if there was a trap for her, whatever she said or did not say.  Pain and nervousness and almost fright had kept her still.  But Molly’s question brought things to such a climax, that she burst into an uncontrollable little laugh, and so answered everybody at once in the best manner possible.  The sound of her laugh brought back the gentlemen too,—­roaming off after their own ices,—­and that would make a diversion.

But it came up again and again.  It was to some too tempting a subject of fun; for others it had a deeper interest; it could not be suffered to lie still.  Wych Hazel’s ears could hardly get out of the sound of raillery, in all sorts of forms; from the soft insinuation of mischief in a mosquito’s song, to the downright attacks of Kitty Fisher’s teeth and Phinny Powder’s claws.  The air was full of it at last, to Wych Hazel’s fancy; even the gentlemen, when they dared not speak openly, seemed in manner or tone to be commiserating or laughing at her.

‘The diplomacy of truth!’ said Mr. Kingsland to Mr. Falkirk, as Hazel passed near them with Mme. Lasalle.  ’I must believe in it as a fixed fact,—­where it exists!  I should judge, by rough estimate, that Miss Kennedy had been asked about fifty-five trying questions this day; and in not one case, to my knowledge, has her answer even clipped the truth.  She is a ninth wonder,—­and from that on to the twenty-ninth!  With all her innocence and ignorance—­which would not comprehend nine-tenths of what might be said to her, I do not know the man who would dare say one word which she should not hear!’—­With which somewhat unusual expression of his feelings Mr. Kingsland took himself away, leaving Prim and Mr. Falkirk alone on the verandah.