ll you accept these flowers as a gift from me? As, for the moment, I've
nothing else to offer."

Patty took the flowers in both hands, but Lord Ruthven still held them,
too, saying: "And will you let them mean----?"

"No," cried Patty, "they don't mean anything--not anything at all!"

Lord Ruthven clasped Patty's two hands, roses and all, in his own.

"They do," he said quietly; "they mean I love you. Do you understand?"

He looked straight into the troubled, beseeching eyes that met his own.

"Please let me go, Lord Ruthven--_please!_" said Patty, her hands
trembling in his own.

"You may go, if you will first call me by some less formal name. Patty,
dearest, say Sylvester--just once!"

This desperate request was too much for Patty's sense of humour.

"Why can't I say it twice?" she said in a low tone, but her voice was
shaking with laughter.

"You little witch!" exclaimed the Earl, and his clasp tightened on her
hands. "Now you shan't go until you _have_ said it twice!"

"Sylvester--Sylvester--there!" said Patty, her eyes twinkling with fun,
and her lips on the verge of laughter. Then, gently disengaging her hands
from his, she gathered up her long white train, and prepared to run away.

The Earl laid a detaining hand on her arm. "Miss Fairfield," he said,
"Patty, I won't keep you now, but to-morrow you'll give me an
opportunity, won't you? to tell you----"

"Wait till to-morrow, my lord," said Patty, really laughing now. "You
will probably have changed your mind."

"How little you know me!" he cried, reproachfully, and then they had
reached the terrace, and joined the others.

Soon after the guests all retired to their own rooms, and the moonlight
on Herenden Hall saw no more the gay scene on the terrace.

Patty, passing through her own room, discovered that her two trunks had
arrived and had been unpacked. She went straight on and tapped at Lady
Hamilton's door. "Get me out of this gown, please, Marie; I've had quite
enough of being a grown-up young woman!"

"What's the matter, Patty?" said Lady Kitty, looking round. "Didn't you
have a good time this evening?"

"The time of my life!" declared Patty, dropping into her own graphic
speech, as she emerged from the heap of lace and silk. "I'll see you
later, Kitty," and without further word she returned to her own room.

And later, when Marie had been dismissed, Patty crept back to Lady
Hamilton, a very different Patty, indeed. Her hair fell in two l