take pains, else "nobody
minds me."'

He looked at her attentively, his handsome face aglow with animation.

'What can you mean by that?' he said slowly.

But she was quite silent, her head well in air.

'Cousins?' he repeated. 'Cousins? And clearly meant as a taunt at me!
Now when did you see my cousins? I grant that I possess a monstrous and
indefensible number. I have it. You think that at Lady Fauntleroy's ball
I devoted myself too much to my family, and too little to----'

'Not at all!' cried Rose hastily, adding, with charming incoherence,
while she twisted a sprig of honeysuckle in her restless fingers,
'_Some_ cousins of course are pretty.'

He paused an instant: then a light broke over his face, and his burst of
quiet laughter was infinitely pleasant to hear. Rose got redder and
redder. She realised dimly that she was hardly maintaining the spirit of
their contract, and that he was studying her with eyes inconveniently
bright and penetrating.

'Shall I quote to you,' he said, 'a sentence of Sterne's? If it violate
our contract I must plead extenuating circumstances. Sterne is
admonishing a young friend as to his manners in society: "You are in
love," he says. "_Tant mieux._ But do not imagine that the fact bestows
on you a licence to behave like a bear towards all the rest of the
world. _Affection may surely conduct thee through an avenue of women to
her who possesses thy heart without tearing the flounces of any of their
petticoats_"--not even those of little cousins of seventeen! I say
this, you will observe, in the capacity you have assigned me. In another
capacity I venture to think I could justify myself still better.'

'My guardian and director,' cried Rose, 'must not begin his functions by
misleading and sophistical quotations from the classics!'

He did not answer for a moment. They were at the gate of Burwood, under
a thick screen of wild cherry trees. The gate was half open, and his
hand was on it.

'And my pupil,' he said, bending to her, 'must not begin by challenging
the prisoner whose hands she has bound, or he will not answer for the
consequences!'

His words were threatening, but his voice, his fine expressive face,
were infinitely sweet. By a kind of fascination she never afterwards
understood, Rose for answer startled him and herself. She bent her head;
she laid her lips on the hand which held the gate, and then she was
through it in an instant. He followed her in vain. He never