When at last he paused for her reply, she said, “Me marry again!  Oh! for shame!”

“Mrs. Staines—­Rosa—­you will marry again, some day.”

“Never.  Me take another husband, after such a man as I have lost!  I should be a monster.  Oh, Lord Tadcaster, you have been so kind to me; so sympathizing.  You made me believe you loved my Christopher, too; and now you have spoiled all.  It is too cruel.”

“Oh!  Mrs. Staines, do you think me capable of feigning—­don’t you see my love for you has taken you by surprise?  But how could I visit you—­look on you—­hear you—­mingle my regrets with yours; yours were the deepest, of course; but mine were honest.”

“I believe it.”  And she gave him her hand.  He held it, and kissed it, and cried over it, as the young will, and implored her, on his knees, not to condemn herself to life-long widowhood, and him to despair.

Then she cried, too; but she was firm; and by degrees she made him see that her heart was inaccessible.

Then at last he submitted with tearful eyes, but a valiant heart.

She offered friendship timidly.

But he was too much of a man to fall into that trap.  “No,” he said:  “I could not, I could not.  Love or nothing.”

“You are right,” said she, pityingly.  “Forgive me.  In my selfishness and my usual folly, I did not see this coming on, or I would have spared you this mortification.”

“Never mind that,” gulped the little earl.  “I shall always be proud I knew you, and proud I loved you, and offered you my hand.”

Then the magnanimous little fellow blessed her, and left her, and discontinued his visits.

Mr. Lusignan found her crying, and got the truth out of her.  He was in despair.  He remonstrated kindly, but firmly.  Truth compels me to say that she politely ignored him.  He observed that phenomenon, and said, “Very well then, I shall telegraph for Uncle Philip.”

“Do,” said the rebel.  “He is always welcome.”

Philip, telegraphed, came down that evening; likewise his little black bag.  He found them in the drawing-room:  papa with the Pall Mall Gazette, Rosa seated, sewing, at a lamp.  She made little Christie’s clothes herself,—­fancy that!

Having ascertained that the little boy was well, Philip, adroitly hiding that he had come down torn with anxiety on that head, inquired with a show of contemptuous indifference, whose cat was dead.

“Nobody’s,” said Lusignan crossly.  Then he turned and pointed the Gazette at his offspring.  “Do you see that young lady stitching there so demurely?”

Philip carefully wiped and then put on his spectacles.

“I see her,” said he.  “She does look a little too innocent.  None of them are really so innocent as all that.  Has she been swearing at the nurse, and boxing her ears?”

“Worse than that.  She has been and refused the Earl of Tadcaster.”

“Refused him—­what! has that little monkey had the audacity?”