of the room? Yes. Enormously
superior. Immensely--

"Why, what are you thinking of to-day, Mr. Erskine? You have played with
my ball."

"I am thinking of you."

"What did you say?" said Gertrude, not catching the serious turn he had
given to the conversation, and poising her cue for a stroke. "Oh! I am
as bad as you; that was the worst stroke I ever made, I think. I beg
your pardon; you said something just now."

"I forget. Nothing of any consequence." And he groaned at his own
cowardice.

"Suppose we stop," she said. "There is no use in finishing the game if
our hands are out. I am rather tired of it."

"Certainly--if you wish it."

"I will finish if you like."

"Not at all. What pleases you, pleases me."

Gertrude made him a little bow, and idly knocked the balls about with
her cue. Erskine's eyes wandered, and his lip moved irresolutely. He had
settled with himself that his declaration should be a frank one--heart
to heart. He had pictured himself in the act of taking her hand
delicately, and saying, "Gertrude, I love you. May I tell you so again?"
But this scheme did not now seem practicable.

"Miss Lindsay."

Gertrude, bending over the table, looked up in alarm.

"The present is as good an opportunity as I will--as I shall--as I
will."

"Shall," said Gertrude.

"I beg your pardon?"

"SHALL," repeated Gertrude. "Did you ever study the doctrine of
necessity?"

"The doctrine of necessity?" he said, bewildered.

Gertrude went to the other side of the table in pursuit of a ball. She
now guessed what was coming, and was willing that it should come; not
because she intended to accept, but because, like other young ladies
experienced in such scenes, she counted the proposals of marriage she
received as a Red Indian counts the scalps he takes.

"We have had a very pleasant time of it here," he said, giving up as
inexplicable the relevance of the doctrine of necessity. "At least, I
have."

"Well," said Gertrude, quick to resent a fancied allusion to her private
discontent, "so have I."

"I am glad of that--more so than I can convey by words."

"Is it any business of yours?" she said, following the disagreeable vein
he had unconsciously struck upon, and suspecting pity in his efforts to
be sympathetic.

"I wish I dared hope so. The happiness of my visit has been due to you
entirely."

"Indeed," said Gertrude, wincing as all the hard things Trefusis
had told her of herself came into her mind a