‘That is a very distant view of me indeed!’ said Rollo.  ’Details are lost.  I will get you a lorgnette the next time I go anywhere.’

‘You had better,’ said Hazel, not stopping to weigh her words this time, ’for such distance does not lend enchantment.’—­ After which the silence on her part became rather profound.

‘No,’ said Rollo dryly, ’I see it does not.  What will you do by and by, when you are sorry for having treated me so this evening?’

’I daresay I shall find out when the time comes.’—­

She leaned her head back against the carriage, wanting dreadfully to get home, and put it down, and think.  She could not think with her hand held fast in that fashion,—­and she could not get it away, without making a fuss and so drawing attention to the fact that it was not in her own keeping.  One or two slight efforts in that direction had been singularly fruitless.  So she sat still, puzzling over questions which have perplexed older heads than hers.  As, how you can have a thing given you, and yet not seem to possess it,—­and why people cannot say words to give you pleasure, without at once adding others to give you pain.  What had she done?  Mr. Falkirk would have thought her a miracle of obedience these last two nights; she even wondered at herself.  How she had enjoyed her home this summer! —­it seemed to her that she loved every leaf upon every tree.  What could he mean by ‘remove’?  And here a long, deep sigh so nearly escaped her lips, that she sat up again in sudden haste, erect as before; but feeling unmistakably lonely, and just a little bit forlorn.

Perhaps her companion’s thoughts had come on one point near to hers; for he gently put the little white glove back upon her lap and left it there.  His words went back to her last ones, though after a minute’s interval.

‘It will come,’ he said confidently.  ’All the field mice of my acquaintance are true and tender. When it comes, Hazel, will you do me justice?’

She stirred uneasily, and once or twice essayed to speak, and did not make it out.  This way of taking things for granted, and on such made ground laying out railroads and running trains, was very confusing.  Hazel felt as if the air were full of mistakes, and none of them within her reach.  When at last she did speak, plainly she had laid hold of the easiest.  The words came out abruptly, but in one of her sweet bird-like tones.

’Mr. Rollo—­I am not the least imaginable bit like a field mouse!’

‘In what respect?’

’These nice, tender people that you know’—­she went on.  ’I believe I am true.’

It might have been some pressure of the latter fact, that made her go on after a moments pause; catching her breath a little, as if to go on was very disagreeable, speaking quick and low; correcting herself here and there.

’I wish you would stop saying—­all sorts of things, Mr. Rollo.  Because they are not true.  Some of them.  And—­I do not understand you.  Sometimes.  And I do not know what you mean by my doing you justice.  Because—­I always did—­I think,—­and I have not “treated you,” at all, to-night.’