‘Miss Hazel,’ said Rollo,—­and he spoke, though very quietly, with a sort of breath of patient impatience,—­’I have come with you to-night because I could not let you drive home alone such a dark night, and because I have something to say to you which will not bear to wait a half-hour longer.  Can you listen to me?’

‘I am listening, sir,’ she said, again in a sort of dull passiveness.  ’May I keep this position?  I think I must be tired.’

‘Are you very angry with me?’ he asked gently.

‘No,’ she said in the same tone.  ’I believe not.  I wish I could be angry with people.  It is the easiest way.’

‘If you are not angry, give me your hand once more.’

‘Are we to execute any further gyrations?’

‘Give it to me, and we will see.’

Rather hesitatingly, one white glove came from the window-sill, within his reach.

‘You are a queer person!’ she said.  ’You will neither give orders nor make me execute them, without having hold of my hand!  Are you keeping watch of my pulse, so as to stop in time?’

He made no answer to that, nor spoke at all immediately.  His hand closed upon the little white glove, and keeping it so, he presently said gravely,

’You and I ought to be good friends, Hazel, on several accounts;—­because your father and mother were good friends of mine,—­and because I love you very dearly.’

A slight motion of her part,—­he could not tell whether she started, or what it was,—­changed instantly to a breathless stillness.  Only a timid stir of the hand, as if it meant to slip away unnoticed.  But it was held too firmly for that.

‘I don’t know whether you know yet,’ he went on after a slight pause, ’what it is to love anybody very dearly.  I remember you told Gyda one day that you had never loved any one so since your mother.  Certainly I have never had a right to flatter myself that I had been able to teach you what it means.  If I am mistaken,—­tell me.’

’Easy work!’—­she might have answered again,—­to tell him what she had never told herself.  And particularly nice of him to choose such a place for his inquiries, where there was no possible way of exit (for her) but the coach window.  What had he never tried to teach her, except to mind?  And of course she never knew anything about—­anything!  But there Hazel shifted her ground, and felt herself growing frightened, and certainly wished her new guardian a hundred miles away.  What did he mean?—­was he only sounding her, as Mr. Falkirk did sometimes?  If so, he might just find out for himself!—­With which clear view of the case, Wych Hazel set her foot (mentally) on all troublesome possibilities, and sat listening to hear her hear beat; and wondered how many statements of fact Mr. Rollo was going to make, and at what point in the list truth would oblige her to start up and confront him?

He had paused a little, to give room for the answer he did not expect.  Seeing it came not, with a slight hastily drawn breath he went on again.