With which Hazel leaned head and hands down upon the window again, and looked out into the dark night.  Would they ever get home?—­But it was impossible to drive faster.  A thick fog filled the air, and it was intensely dark.

’I have been telling you that I love you.  That you do not quite understand.  I am bound not to speak on the subject again for a whole year.  But supposing that in the meantime you should come to the understanding of it,—­and suppose you find out that I have given field mice a just character;—­will you do me the justice to let me find it out?  And in the meantime,—­we shall be at Chickaree presently,—­perhaps you will give me, in a day or two, the assurance I have begged of you, and not drive me to extremities.’

‘Very well!’ she said, raising her head again,—­’if you will have it in that shape!  But the worth of an insignificant thing depends a little upon the setting, and the setting of my refusal was much better than the setting of my compliance.  There is no grace whatever about this.  And take notice, sir, that if you had gone to “extremities,” you would have driven yourself.  I always have obeyed, and always should.  But I give the promise!’—­and her head went down again, and her eyes looked straight out into the fog.

He said ‘Thank you!’ earnestly, and he said no more.  There is no doubt but he felt relieved; at the same time there is no doubt but Mr. Rollo was a mystified man.  That her compliance had no grace about it was indeed manifest enough; the grace of her refusal was further to seek.  He deposited the little lady of Chickaree at her own door with no more words than a ’good-night;’ and went the rest of his way in the fog alone.  And if Wych Hazel had suffered some annoyance that evening, her young guardian was not without his share of pain.  It was rather sharp for a time, after he parted from her.  Had the work of these weeks, and of his revealed guardianship, and of his exercise of office, driven her from him entirely?  He looked into the question, as he drove home through the fog.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

DODGING.

It was no new thing for the young lady of Chickaree to come home late, and dismiss her attendants, and put herself to bed; neither was it uncommon for her to sleep over breakfast time in such cases, and take her coffee afterwards in Mrs. Bywank’s room alone.  But when the fog had cleared away, the morning after Mme. Lasalle’s ball, and the sun was riding high, and still no signs of Miss Wych, then Mrs. Bywank went to her room.  And the good housekeeper was much taken aback to find peasant dress and grey serge curled down together in a heap on the floor, and Miss Wych among them, asleep with her head in a chair.  Perhaps that in itself was not so much; but the long eyelashes lay wet and heavy upon her cheek,—­and Mrs. Bywank knew that token of old.