“Very well, I promise.  Now what will you do for me?”

“Work for you—­write for you—­suffer for you—­be self-denying for you—­and even give myself the pain of disappointing you now and then—­looking forward to the time when I shall be able to say ‘Yes’ to everything you ask me.  Ah! child, you little know what it costs me to say ‘No’ to you.”

Rosa put her arms round him and acquiesced.  She was one of those who go with the last speaker; but, for that very reason, the eternal companionship of so flighty and flirty a girl as Miss Lucas was injurious to her.

One day Lady Cicely Treherne was sitting with Mrs. Staines, smiling languidly at her talk, and occasionally drawling out a little plain good sense, when in came Miss Lucas, with her tongue well hung, as usual, and dashed into twenty topics in ten minutes.

This young lady in her discourse was like those little oily beetles you see in small ponds, whose whole life is spent in tacking—­confound them for it!—­generally at right angles.  What they are in navigation was Miss Lucas in conversation:  tacked so eternally from topic to topic, that no man on earth, and not every woman, could follow her.

At the sight and sound of her, Lady Cicely congealed and stiffened.  Easy and unpretending with Mrs. Staines, she was all dignity, and even majesty, in the presence of this chatterbox; and the smoothness with which the transfiguration was accomplished marked that accomplished actress the high-bred woman of the world.

Rosa, better able to estimate the change of manner than Miss Lucas was, who did not know how little this Sawny was afflicted with misplaced dignity, looked wistfully and distressed at her.  Lady Cicely smiled kindly in reply, rose, without seeming to hurry,—­catch her condescending to be rude to Charlotte Lucas,—­and took her departure, with a profound and most gracious courtesy to the lady who had driven her away.

Mrs. Staines saw her down-stairs, and said, ruefully, “I am afraid you do not like my friend Miss Lucas.  She is a great rattle, but so good-natured and clever.”

Lady Cicely shook her head.  “Clevaa people don’t talk so much nonsense before strangaas.”

“Oh, dear!” said Rosa.  “I was in hopes you would like her.”

“Do you like her?”

“Indeed I do; but I shall not, if she drives an older friend away.”

“My dyah, I’m not easily dwiven from those I esteem.  But you undastand that is not a woman for me to mispwonownce my ’ah’s befaw—­nor for you to make A bosom fwiend of—­Wosa Staines.”

She said this with a sudden maternal solemnity and kindness that contrasted nobly and strangely with her yea-nay style, and Mrs. Staines remembered the words years after they were spoken.

It so happened that after this Mrs. Staines received no more visits from Lady Cicely for some time, and that vexed her.  She knew her sex enough to be aware that they are very jealous, and she permitted herself to think that this high-minded Sawny was jealous of Miss Lucas.