blic; and dearly
loved, as now, a retirement into the tea-room, where they could
enact their _role_ of turtle-doves, uninterrupted, yet not entirely
unobserved. Perhaps, after all, this imaginary restraint afforded the
little spice of romance that preserved their attachment from decay.

Puckers, I say, marvelled at these not at all, but she did marvel, and
admitted it, when Miss Bruce, entering the tea-room, was seen to be
attended, not by Mr. Stanmore, but by Lord Bearwarden.

Her dark eyes glittered, and there was an exceedingly becoming flush
on the girl's fair face, usually so pale. Her maid thought she had
never seen Maud look so beautiful, and to judge by the expression of
his countenance, it would appear Lord Bearwarden thought so too. They
had been dancing together, and he seemed to be urging her to dance
with him again. His lordship's manner was more eager than common, and
in his eyes came an anxious expression that only one woman, the one
woman it was so difficult to forget, had ever been able to call into
them before.

"Look odd!" he repeated, while he set down her cup and gave her back
the fan he had been holding. "I thought you were above all that, Miss
Bruce, and did what you liked, without respect to the fools who stare
and can't understand."

She drew up her head with a proud gesture peculiar to her. "How do you
know I do like it?" said she haughtily.

He looked hurt, and lowered his voice to a whisper. "Forgive me," he
said, "I have no right to suppose it. I have been presumptuous, and
you are entitled to be unkind. I have monopolised you too much, and
you're--you're bored with me. It's my own fault."

"I never said so," she answered in the same tone; "who is unkind now?"
Then the dark eyes were raised for one moment to look full in his, and
it was all over with Lord Bearwarden.

"You will dance with me again before I go," said he, recovering his
former position with an alacrity that denoted some previous practice.
"I shall ask nobody else--why should I? You know I only came here to
see _you_. One waltz, Miss Bruce--promise?"

"I promise," she answered, and again came into her eyes that smile
which so fascinated her admirers to their cost. "I shall get into
horrid disgrace for it, and so I shall for sitting here so long now.
I'm always doing wrong. However, I'll risk it if you will."

Her manner was playful, almost tender; and Puckers, adding another
large infusion of tea, wondered to see her