sferable. Did she let him
in?'

'Not she. No doing of hers, nor liking, I promise you. I think
he has settled his own business, by the way. But we can't try
this on a second time, Aunt Victorine. Confound him!'

CHAPTER XXXVII.

IN A FOG.

Hazel was accompanied to her carriage of course, as usual. But
when she was shut in, she heard an unwelcome voice saying to
the coachman, 'Drive slowly, Reo; the night is very dark;' and
immediately the carriage door was opened again, and the
speaker took his seat beside her; without asking leave this
time. A passing glare from the lamps of another carriage
shewed her head and hands down on the window-sill, in the way
she had come from Greenbush. Neither head nor hands stirred
now.

Her companion was silent and let her be still, until the
carriage had moved out of the Moscheloo grounds and was
quietly making its way along the dark high road. Lamps flung
some light right and left from the coach box; but within the
darkness was deep. The reflection from trees and bushes, the
gleam of fence rails, the travelling spots of illumination in
the road, did not much help matters there.

'Miss Hazel,' said Rollo,--and he spoke, though very quietly,
with a sort of breath of patient impatience,--'I have come with
you to-night because I could not let you drive home alone such
a dark night, and because I have something to say to you which
will not bear to wait a half-hour longer. Can you listen to
me?'

'I am listening, sir,' she said, again in a sort of dull
passiveness. 'May I keep this position? I think I must be
tired.'

'Are you very angry with me?' he asked gently.

'No,' she said in the same tone. 'I believe not. I wish I
could be angry with people. It is the easiest way.'

'If you are not angry, give me your hand once more.'

'Are we to execute any further gyrations?'

'Give it to me, and we will see.'

Rather hesitatingly, one white glove came from the window-
sill, within his reach.

'You are a queer person!' she said. 'You will neither give
orders nor make me execute them, without having hold of my
hand! Are you keeping watch of my pulse, so as to stop in
time?'

He made no answer to that, nor spoke at all immediately. His
hand closed upon the little white glove, and keeping it so, he
presently said gravely,

'You and I ought to be good friends, Hazel, on several
accounts;--because your father and mother were good friends of
mine,--and because I love you ve