ith supreme scorn.

"It's some one's here, because the address is at Mrs. Greene's. Come,
tell me at once, monsieur."

"The only fool in the Artillery," said Fairlie, curtly: "Belle
Courtenay."

"Captain Courtenay!" echoed Geraldine, with a little flush on her
cheeks, caused, perhaps, by the quick glance the Colonel shot at her as
he spoke.

"Captain Courtenay!" said Katherine Vane. "Why, what can he want with a
wife? I thought he had _l'embarras de choix_ offered him in that line;
at least, so he makes out himself."

"I dare say," said Fairlie, dryly, "it's for a bet he's made, to see how
many women he can hoax, I believe."

"How can you tell it is a hoax?" said Geraldine, throwing cowslips at
her greyhound. "It may be some medium of intercourse with some one he
really cares for, and who may understand his meaning."

"Perhaps you are in his confidence, Geraldine, or perhaps you are
thinking of answering it yourself?"

"Perhaps," said the young lady, waywardly, making the cowslips into a
ball, "there might be worse investments. Your _bete noire_ is strikingly
handsome; he is the perfection of style; he is going to be Equerry to
the Prince; his mother is just married again to Lord Chevenix; he did
not name half his attractions in that line in the _Daily_."

With which Geraldine rushed across the meadow after the greyhound and
the cowslip ball, and Fairlie lay quiet plucking up the heaths by the
roots. He lay there still, when the cowslip ball struck him a soft
fragrant blow against his lips, and knocked the Cuba from between his
teeth.

"Why don't you speak?" asked Geraldine, plaintively. "You are not half
so pleasant to play with as you were before you went to India and I was
seven or eight, and you had La Grace, and battledoor and shuttlecock,
and cricket, and all sorts of games with me in the old garden at
Charlton."

He might have told her she was much less dangerous then than now; he was
not disposed to flatter her, however. So he answered her quietly,

"I preferred you as you were then."

"Indeed!" said Geraldine, with a hot color in her cheeks "I do not think
there are many who would indorse your complimentary opinion."

"Possibly," said Fairlie, coldly.

She took up her cowslips, and hit him hard with them several times.

"Don't speak in that tone. If you dislike me, you can say so in warmer
words, surely."

Fairlie smiled _malgre lui_.

"What a child you are, Geraldine! but a child that i