--Lord Lytton.


Bluebell had no difficulty in preserving silence about the Sunday's
escapade. It never occurred to Mrs. Rolleston to enquire what time she
had returned, and an evasive answer to Cecil was all that it entailed.
But she was very much perplexed by the change in Captain Du Meresq's
manner. The cold civility recommended by Miss Opie seemed all on his
side. Nothing but good-humoured indifference was apparent in his manner.
Their acquaintance did not seem to have progressed further than the first
evening; indeed, it had rather retrograded; and she could almost imagine
she had _dreamt_ the tender speeches he had lavished on her in the Humber
woods.

Cecil and he were out sleighing most afternoons, and Bluebell was thrown
on nursery and school-room for companionship--insipid pabulum to the
vanity of a young lady in her first glimpse of conquest, and who believed
she had stricken down a quarry worthy of her bow. Having nothing to
distract her, she considered the problem exhaustively from morning till
night, and, if she were not in love with him before, she had got him into
her head now, if not into her heart. His being so much with Cecil did not
strike her as any clue to the mystery. They were relations, of course, or
nearly the same thing; there was no flirting in their matter-of-fact
intercourse.

Cecil found her one afternoon reading over the bed-room fire, in a
somewhat desponding attitude. Miss Rolleston had just come in from a
drive, her slight form shrouded in sealskins, an air of brightness and
vivacity replacing her usual rather languid manner.