first experience Kate had had of Rose's temper. She drew back
now, troubled.

"I hope we will not be troubled with him long!" continued Rose,
spitefully. "The place was stupid enough before, but it will be worse
with that sulky Scotchman prowling about. I tried to be civil to him
this evening. I shall never try again."

With which Miss Rose closed her lips, and relapsed into her book,
supremely indifferent to her sister's heightened colour and flashing
eyes. She turned away in silence, and fifteen minutes after, Rose got up
and left the room, without saving good-night to any one.

Rose kept her word. From that evening she was never civil to the Scotch
baronet, and took every occasion to snub him. But her incivility was as
completely thrown away as her charms had been. It is doubtful whether
Sir Ronald ever knew he was snubbed; and Kate, seeing it, smiled to
herself, and was friends with offended Rose once more. She and the
baronet were on the best of terms; he was always willing to talk to her,
always ready to be her escort when she walked or rode, always on hand to
turn her music and listen entranced to her singing. If it was not a
flirtation, it was something very like it, and Rose was nowhere. She
looked on with indignant eyes, and revenged herself to the best of her
power by flirting in her turn with the Reverend Augustus Clare.

"He is nothing but a ninny!" she said to Grace; "and has eyes for no one
but Kate. Oh, how I wish my darling Jules were here, or even your
brother, Grace--he was better than no one!"

"My brother is very much obliged to you."

"You talk to me of my flirting propensities," continued the exasperated
Rose. "I should like to know what you call Kate's conduct with that
little Scotchman."

"Friendship, my dear," Grace answered, repressing a smile.

"Remember, they have known each other for years."

"Friendship! Yes; it would be heartless coquetry if it were I. I hope
Lieutenant Reginald Stanford, of Stanford Royals, will like it when he
comes. Sir Ronald Keith is over head and ears in love with her, and she
knows it, and is drawing him on. A more cold-blooded flirtation no one
ever saw!"

"Nonsense, Rose! It is only a friendly intimacy."

But Rose, unable to stand this, bounced out of the room in a passion,
and sought consolation in her pet novels.

Kate and Sir Ronald were certainly very much together; but,
notwithstanding their intimacy, she found time to devote two or three
hou