rose formally, as if permitting the latter to take the
vacated seat. This partly imposed on him the necessity of seeking Miss
Eversleigh, who, having withdrawn to the other end of the room, was
turning over the leaves of an album. As Randolph joined her, she said,
without looking up, "Is Miss Avondale a friend of yours?"

The question was so pertinent to his reflections at the moment that he
answered impulsively, "I really don't know."

"Yes, that's the answer, I think, most of her acquaintances would give,
if they were asked the same question and replied honestly," said the
young girl, as if musing.

"Even Sir William?" suggested Randolph, half smiling, yet wondering at
her unlooked-for serious shrewdness as he glanced toward the sofa.

"Yes; but HE wouldn't care. You see, there would be a pair of them." She
stopped with a slight blush, as if she had gone too far, but corrected
herself in her former youthful frankness: "You don't mind my saying what
I did of her? You're not such a PARTICULAR friend?"

"We both owe a debt of gratitude to your cousin Jack," said Randolph, in
some embarrassment.

"Yes, but YOU feel it and she doesn't. So that doesn't make you
friends."

"But she has taken good care of Captain Dornton's child," suggested
Randolph loyally.

He stopped, however, feeling that he was on dangerous ground. But Miss
Eversleigh put her own construction on his reticence, and said,--

"I don't think she cares for it much--or for ANY children."

Randolph remembered his own impression the only time he had ever seen
her with the child, and was struck with the young girl's instinct again
coinciding with his own. But, possibly because he knew he could never
again feel toward Miss Avondale as he had, he was the more anxious to
be just, and he was about to utter a protest against this general
assumption, when the voice of Sir William broke in upon them. He was
taking his leave--and the opportunity of accompanying Miss Avondale
to her lodgings on the way to his hotel. He lingered a moment over his
handshaking with Randolph.

"Awfully glad to have met you, and I fancy you're awfully glad to get
rid of what they call your 'trust.' Must have given you a beastly lot of
bother, eh--might have given you more?"

He nodded familiarly to Miss Eversleigh, and turned away with Miss
Avondale, who waved her usual smiling patronage to Randolph, even
including his companion in that half-amused, half-superior salutation.
Pe