She raised her window-blind at a window letting in sweet air, to gather indications of promising weather.  Her lover stood on the grass-plot among the flower-beds below, looking up, as though it had been his expectation to see her which had drawn her to gaze out with an idea of some expectation of her own.  So visionary was his figure in the grey solitariness of the moveless morning that she stared at the apparition, scarce putting faith in him as man, until he kissed his hand to her, and had softly called her name.

Impulsively she waved a hand from her lips.

Now there was no retreat for either of them!

She awoke to this conviction after a flight of blushes that burnt her thoughts to ashes as they sprang.  Thoughts born blushing, all of the crimson colour, a rose-garden, succeeded, and corresponding with their speed her feet paced the room, both slender hands crossed at her throat under an uplifted chin, and the curves of her dark eyelashes dropped as in a swoon.

‘He loves me!’ The attestation of it had been visible.  ‘No one but me!’ Was that so evident?

Her father picked up silly stories of him—­a man who made enemies recklessly!

Cecilia was petrified by a gentle tapping at her door.  Her father called to her, and she threw on her dressing-gown, and opened the door.

The colonel was in his riding-suit.

‘I haven’t slept a wink, and I find it’s the same with you,’ he said, paining her with his distressed kind eyes.  ’I ought not to have hinted anything last night without proofs.  Austin’s as unhappy as I am.’

‘At what, my dear papa, at what?’ cried Cecilia.

’I ride over to Steynham this morning, and I shall bring you proofs, my poor child, proofs.  That foreign tangle of his . . .’

‘You speak of Nevil, papa?’

’It’s a common scandal over London.  That Frenchwoman was found at Lord Romfrey’s house; Lady Romfrey cloaked it.  I believe the woman would swear black’s white to make Nevil Beauchamp appear an angel; and he’s a desperately cunning hand with women.  You doubt that.’

She had shuddered slightly.

’You won’t doubt if I bring you proofs.  Till I come back from Steynham, I ask you not to see him alone:  not to go out to him.’

The colonel glanced at her windows.

Cecilia submitted to the request, out of breath, consenting to feel like a tutored girl, that she might conceal her guilty knowledge of what was to be seen through the windows.

‘Now I’m off,’ said he, and kissed her.

‘If you would accept Nevil’s word!’ she murmured.

‘Not where women are concerned!’

He left her with this remark, which found no jealous response in her heart, yet ranged over certain dispersed inflammable grains, like a match applied to damp powder; again and again running in little leaps of harmless firm keeping her alive to its existence, and surprising her that it should not have been extinguished.