‘Do you think he looks much like a ruined man, Mr. Falkirk?’ she said, in one of the pauses of their talk.

A flash of lightning quickness and brightness came to her from Rollo’s eyes.  Mr. Falkirk lifted his dumbly, not knowing how to take the girl.  He had not, so far in the talk, touched the subject of Mrs. Coles’ communications, though no doubt they had not been out of his mind for one instant.  But somehow, Mr. Falkirk had lacked inclination to call his younger coadjutor to account, and probably was hopeless of effecting any supposable good by so doing.  Now he stared wonderingly up at Wych Hazel.  She was looking straight at him, awaiting an answer; but fully alive to the situation, and a little bit frightened thereat, and with the fun and the confusion both getting into her face in an irresistible way.  Mr. Falkirk’s face went down again with a grunt, or a growl; it was rather dubious in intent.  Rollo’s eyes did not waver from their inquisition of Wych Hazel’s face.  It was getting to be hot work!—­Hazel touched her hand bell, and turned away to give orders, and came back to her business; sending Mr. Falkirk a cup of tea that was simply scalding.  Her bravery was done for that time.

‘What have you been doing this winter?’ Mr. Falkirk finally concluded to ask.

‘Investing in new stock,’ Rollo answered carelessly.

‘Don’t pay, does it?’

’I think it will.  Money is worth what you can get out of it, you know.’

’Pray, if I may ask, what do you expect to get out of it in this way?’

’Large returns’—­said Rollo very calmly.

‘I don’t see it,’ said Mr. Falkirk.  ’I hope you do; but I can’t.’

‘You have not the elements to make a perfect calculation.’

Rollo, it was plain, understood himself, and was in no confusion on the subject.  Mr. Falkirk, either in uncertainty or in disgust, declined to pursue it.  He finished his tea, and then, perhaps, feeling that he had no right to keep watch over his brother guardian, much to Wych Hazel’s discomfiture, he took up his book and marched away.

Rollo left the table and came round then to a seat by her side.

‘What have you been doing this winter?’ he asked, putting the question with his eyes as well as with his words.

’Making old stock pay,’—­said the girl, looking down at her folded hands; she was not of the calm sisterhood who hide themselves in crochet.

‘Perhaps you will be so good as to enlarge upon that.’

Hazel sent back the first answer that came to her tongue, and the next:  it was no part of her plan to have herself in the foreground.

‘This is a fair average specimen of our tea-drinkings,’ she said.  ’And the mornings are hardly more eventful.  Just lately, Mr. Falkirk has been a good deal disturbed about you.  Or else he was easy about you, and disturbed about your doings,—­he has such a confused way of putting things.  But we heard you had copied my “hurricane track,” ’ said Miss Wych, folding her hands in a new position.