‘Thank you, no; I would rather not.’

A lover is ever ready to suspect that water has been thrown on the fire that burns for him in the bosom of his darling.  Sudden as the change was, it was very decided.  His sensitive ears were pained by the absence of his Christian name, which her lips had lavishly made sweet to him.  He stopped in his walk.

’You spoke of riding to Fallow field.  Is it possible you don’t want me to bring my friend here?  There’s time to prevent it.’

Judged by the Countess de Saldar, the behaviour of this well-born English maid was anything but well-bred.  She absolutely shrugged her shoulders and marched a-head of him into the conservatory, where she began smelling at flowers and plucking off sere leaves.

In such cases a young man always follows; as her womanly instinct must have told her, for she expressed no surprise when she heard his voice two minutes after.

‘Rose! what have I done?’

‘Nothing at all,’ she said, sweeping her eyes over his a moment, and resting them on the plants.

‘I must have uttered something that has displeased you.’

‘No.’

Brief negatives are not re-assuring to a lover’s uneasy mind.

‘I beg you—­Be frank with me, Rose!’

A flame of the vanished fire shone in her face, but subsided, and she shook her head darkly.

‘Have you any objection to my friend?’

Her fingers grew petulant with an orange leaf.  Eyeing a spot on it, she said, hesitatingly: 

’Any friend of yours I am sure I should like to help.  But—­but I wish you wouldn’t associate with that—­that kind of friend.  It gives people all sorts of suspicions.’

Evan drew a sharp breath.

The voices of Master Alec and Miss Dorothy were heard shouting on the lawn.  Alec gave Dorothy the slip and approached the conservatory on tip-toe, holding his hand out behind him to enjoin silence and secrecy.  The pair could witness the scene through the glass before Evan spoke.

‘What suspicions?’ he asked.

Rose looked up, as if the harshness of his tone pleased her.

‘Do you like red roses best, or white?’ was her answer, moving to a couple of trees in pots.

‘Can’t make up your mind?’ she continued, and plucked both a white and red rose, saying:  ‘There! choose your colour by-and-by,’ and ask Juley to sew the one you choose in your button-hole.’

She laid the roses in his hand, and walked away.  She must have known that there was a burden of speech on his tongue.  She saw him move to follow her, but this time she did not linger, and it may be inferred that she wished to hear no more.

CHAPTER XVII

IN WHICH EVAN WRITES HIMSELF TAILOR