"Turn your eyes my way, Miss Lefroy," pleads Mr. Cecil Dawson, a handsome saucy Oxonian. "I challenge your closest scrutiny. Gaze into my limpid countenance, and tell me can you detect therein the faintest trace of uneasiness or apprehension? Could anything be more calm, more effulgent with the glow of seraphic virtue and--and--"
"Inordinate conceit! No, Mr. Dawson. I think not."
He draws himself up in mock indignation, and then, deeming it wiser to leave the field to his more eligible cousin, strolls languidly over to Addie, whom he seeks, with but scant success, to entice into a light flirtation, that young person being quite unversed in the art of _persiflage_ or delicately-flavored "chaff" in which he excels.
"You'll tell me what she said, won't you, Miss Lefroy?" implores Everard, hanging ardently over the low chair where Pauline sits diligently working in the breast of a crewel-stork. "You'll give a fellow a chance, won't you? In common fairness you must. Just an idea, a hint--that's all I want--and I'll make her eat her own words--by Jove, I will! Tell me, tell me!"
"But, Mr. Everard, what am I to tell you? I never said that Lady Crawford even--"
"No, no; but you looked it, and you can't deny that she mentioned my name. You can't look me in the face now, and say she didn't. No; I thought not. By Jove, it's an awful fate to be at the mercy of a woman of that kind, to be taunted with--with sins you don't even know the name of, with crimes you never--"
"Yes, you are, Miss Lefroy--you know you are," he answers bitterly. "Your eyes are taunting me, your laugh is taunting me; you--you are making me utterly miserable."
"Am I really?" answers Pauline, jumping up and moving across the room. "Then I had better leave you at once."
He makes no effort to follow her, but sits staring blankly out at the chill winter landscape, for the poor young fellow is wofully in love and full of despondent diffidence.
"Don't look so sad," says a small mysterious voice at his side. "I heard what she said, and it was not very bad, after all."
"You did, you jolly little girl?" he exclaims eagerly. "You'll tell me what it was, won't you?"
"Oh, I daren't! I'm forbidden to open my lips when there are visitors. I always say the wrong thing, you know. They'd be mad if they knew I was talking to you now. I've been hiding behind the curtain for the last hour, and heard everything."