distant part of the ranch, Mrs. Randolph
was presumably engaged in her boudoir, and Rose was sitting between
Adele and Emile before the piano in the drawing-room, listlessly
turning over the leaves of some music. There had been an odd mingling of
eagerness and abstraction in the usual attentions of the young man that
morning, and a certain nervous affectation in his manner of twisting the
ends of a small black moustache, which resembled his mother's eyebrows,
that had affected Rose with a half-amused, half-uneasy consciousness,
but which she had, however, referred to the restlessness produced by the
weather. It occurred to her also that the vacuously amiable Adele had
once or twice regarded her with the same precocious, childlike curiosity
and infantine cunning she had once before exhibited. All this did not,
however, abate her admiration for both--perhaps particularly for this
picturesquely gentlemanly young fellow, with his gentle audacities
of compliment, his caressing attentions, and his unfailing and equal
address. And when, discovering that she had mislaid her fan for the
fifth time that morning, he started up with equal and undiminished fire
to go again and fetch it, the look of grateful pleasure and pleading
perplexity in her pretty eyes might have turned a less conceited brain
than his.

"But you don't know where it is!"

"I shall find it by instinct."

"You are spoiling me--you two." The parenthesis was a hesitating
addition, but she continued, with fresh sincerity, "I shall be quite
helpless when I leave here--if I am ever able to go by myself."

"Don't ever go, then."

"But just now I want my fan; it is so close everywhere to-day."

"I fly, mademoiselle."

He started to the door.

She called after him:--

"Let me help your instinct, then; I had it last in the major's study."

"That was where I was going."

He disappeared. Rose got up and moved uneasily towards the window. "How
queer and quiet it looks outside. It's really too bad that he should be
sent after that fan again. He'll never find it." She resumed her place
at the piano, Adele following her with round, expectant eyes. After a
pause she started up again. "I'll go and fetch it myself," she said,
with a half-embarrassed laugh, and ran to the door.

Scarcely understanding her own nervousness, but finding relief in rapid
movement, Rose flew lightly up the staircase. The major's study, where
she had been writing letters, during his absenc