‘It’s clear it was that other fellow,’ said Harry, casting a side-glance up at the Countess’s window.

Rose looked straight at Laxley, and abruptly turned on her heel.

In the afternoon, Lady Jocelyn sent a message to Evan that she wished to see him.  Rose was with her mother.  Lady Jocelyn had only to say, that if he thought his friend a suitable tutor for Miss Bonner, they would be happy to give him the office at Beckley Court.  Glad to befriend poor Jack, Evan gave the needful assurances, and was requested to go and fetch him forthwith.  When he left the room, Rose marched out silently beside him.

‘Will you ride over with me, Rose?’ he said, though scarcely anxious that she should see Mr. Raikes immediately.

The singular sharpness of her refusal astonished him none the less.

‘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.