rish interest was going on within him. Her
seriousness at the moment, the chances of the future, her character, his
own--all these knotty points entered into it, had to be weighed and
decided with lightning rapidity. But Hugh Flaxman was born under a lucky
star, and the natal charm held good.

At last he gave a long breath; he stooped and kissed her hands.

'So be it. For six months I will be your guardian, your friend, your
teasing implacable censor. At the end of that time I will be--well,
never mind what. I give you fair warning.'

He released her. Rose clasped her hands before her and stood drooping.
Now that she had gained her point, all her bright mocking independence
seemed to have vanished. She might have been in reality the tremulous
timid child she seemed. His spirits rose; he began to like the role she
had assigned to him. The touch of unexpectedness, in all she said and
did, acted with exhilarating force on his fastidious romantic sense.

'Now, then,' he said, picking up her gloves from the grass, 'you have
given me my rights; I will begin to exercise them at once. I must take
you home, the clouds are coming up again, and on the way will you
kindly give me a full, true, and minute account of these two months
during which you have been so dangerously left to your own devices?'

She hesitated, and began to speak with difficulty, her eyes on the
ground. But by the time they were in the main Shanmoor path again, and
she was not so weakly dependent on his physical aid, her spirits too
returned. Pacing along with her hands behind her, she began by degrees
to throw into her accounts of her various visits and performances plenty
of her natural malice.

And after a bit, as that strange storm of feeling which had assailed her
on the mountain-top abated something of its bewildering force, certain
old grievances began to raise very lively heads in her. The smart of
Lady Fauntleroy's ball was still there; she had not yet forgiven him all
those relations; and the teasing image of Lady Florence woke up in her.

'It seems to me,' he said at last dryly, as he opened a gate for her not
far from Burwood, 'that you have been making yourself agreeable to a
vast number of people. In my new capacity of censor I should like to
warn you that there is nothing so bad for the character as universal
popularity.'

'_I_ have not got a thousand and one important cousins!' she exclaimed,
her lip curling. 'If I want to please, I must