’Yes!  I will trust you, and that is saying very much, for what protection is a brother?  I am alone here—­defenceless!’

Men, of course, grow virtuously zealous in an instant on behalf of the lovely dame who tells them bewitchingly, she is alone and defenceless, with pitiful dimples round the dewy mouth that entreats their guardianship and mercy!

The provincial Don Juan found words—­a sign of clearer sensations within.  He said: 

‘Upon my honour, I’d look after you better than fifty brothers!’

The Countess eyed him softly, and then allowed herself the luxury of a laugh.

‘No, no! it is not the sheep, it is the wolf I fear.’

And she went through a bit of the concluding portion of the drama of Little Red Riding Hood very prettily, and tickled him so that he became somewhat less afraid of her.

‘Are you truly so bad as report would have you to be, Mr. Harry?’ she asked, not at all in the voice of a censor.

‘Pray don’t think me—­a—­anything you wouldn’t have me,’ the youth stumbled into an apt response.

‘We shall see,’ said the Countess, and varied her admiration for the noble creature beside her with gentle ejaculations on the beauty of the deer that ranged the park of Beckley Court, the grand old oaks and beeches, the clumps of flowering laurel, and the rich air swarming Summer.

She swept out her arm.  ’And this most magnificent estate will be yours?  How happy will she be who is led hither to reside by you, Mr. Harry!’

‘Mine?  No; there’s the bother,’ he answered, with unfeigned chagrin.  ’Beckley isn’t Elburne property, you know.  It belongs to old Mrs. Bonner, Rose’s grandmama.’

‘Oh!’ interjected the Countess, indifferently.

‘I shall never get it—­no chance,’ Harry pursued.  ’Lost my luck with the old lady long ago.’  He waxed excited on a subject that drew him from his shamefacedness.  ’It goes to Juley Bonner, or to Rosey; it’s a toss-up which.  If I’d stuck up to Juley, I might have had a pretty fair chance.  They wanted me to, that’s why I scout the premises.  But fancy Juley Bonner!’

‘You couldn’t, upon your honour!’ rhymed the Countess. (And Harry let loose a delighted ‘Ha! ha !’ as at a fine stroke of wit.) ’Are we enamoured of a beautiful maiden, Senor Harry?’

‘Not a bit,’ he assured her eagerly.  ’I don’t know any girl.  I don’t care for ’em.  I don’t, really.’

The Countess impressively declared to him that he must be guided by her; and that she might the better act his monitress, she desired to hear the pedigree of the estate, and the exact relations in which it at present stood toward the Elburne family.

Glad of any theme he could speak on, Harry informed her that Beckley Court was bought by his grandfather Bonner from the proceeds of a successful oil speculation.

‘So we ain’t much on that side,’ he said.