ointment! I saw that all my efforts up
till then had been quite useless. He was still meaning to marry, and, as
was right, poor dear, he told the news to his friend. Daisy's name did
not come in. Something made us break off--a flash of lightning, I
think, and the beginning of the storm. I should have found something to
divert the conversation otherwise. It was much better, in view of what I
have to do, that I should not officially know to whom he hoped to be
married."

Already the calming effect of telling a trouble to a friend was being
felt by Jeannie, and she sat down on the sofa near the window, clasping
her hands behind her head, and looking not at Alice, but into the dark
soft night. A little rain was falling, hissing among the bushes.

"I saw then," she said, "that I had made a stupid mistake. I had thought
that by mere friendliness and sympathy and making myself agreeable, and
making him admire me (which he did and does), I could get him away from
Daisy. I see now how impossible that was. If it is I who am going to
take him away, he must feel more than that. He will not leave the girl
he intended to marry unless he falls in love in his own manner with
some one else. Alice, I believe he is doing so."

Jeannie paused a moment.

"I hate it all," she said, "but I can't help being immensely interested.
Now for the part you don't understand, the part that made you think that
I had given it all up. It was a bold game, and, I believe, a correct
one. I dropped him--d-r-o-p, drop. Why? Simply in order that he might
miss me. Of course, I risked failure. He might have shrugged his
shoulders, and wondered why I had taken so much trouble to flirt with
him, and gone straight away and resumed operations with Daisy. He did go
straight back to Daisy, but do you think they are getting on very
nicely? I don't. The more he sees of her now, the more he thinks about
me. I don't say he has kind thoughts of me; he is puzzled, _but_ he
doesn't dismiss me. He is angry instead, and hurt. That shows he wants
me. He will never propose to Daisy while he feels like that."

There was a short silence. Then Lady Nottingham said,--

"Do you mean you want to make him propose to you?"

"Yes."

The monosyllable came very dryly and unimportantly, as if to a perfectly
commonplace inquiry. Then Lady Nottingham, in her turn, got up.
Jeannie's restlessness and disquiet seemed to have transferred
themselves to her.

"But it is an intolerable rol