is with difficulty she cleaves to the less
offensive smiles and keeps herself from laughing aloud.

"Why should I do that?" she says, a little saucily. Indeed, she knows
this young man to be so utterly in her power--and power is so sweet when
first acquired, and so prone to breed tyranny--that she hardly turns
aside to meditate upon the pain she may be causing him.

"I don't know," a little sadly; then, "Monica, you like me?"

"Yes, I like you," says Miss Beresford, as she might have answered had
she been questioned as to her opinion of an aromatic russet.

Repressing a gesture of impatience, Desmond goes on calmly,--

"Better than Ryde?"

"Than Mr. Ryde?" She stops and glances at the gravel at her feet in a
would-be thoughtful fashion, and pushes it to and fro with her pretty
Louis Quinze shoe. She pauses purposely, and makes quite an affair of
her hesitation.

"Yes, Ryde," says he, impatiently.

"How can I answer that?" she says, at length, with studied deliberation,
"when I know so little of either him--or you?"

His indignation increases.

"Knowing us both at _least_ equally well, you must have formed by this
time some opinion of us."

"I should indeed," says the young girl, slowly, always with her eyes
upon the gravel; "but unfortunately it never occurred to me,--the vital
necessity of doing so, I mean."

Though her head is still bent, he can detect the little amused smile
that is curving her mobile lips. There can be small doubt but that she
is enjoying his discomfiture immensely.

"Certainly there is no reason why _you_ should waste a thought on either
him or me," he returns, stiffly.

"No; and yet I do waste one on--_you_--sometimes," says she, with a
gleam of tenderness, and a swift glance from under her long lashes that
somehow angers him intensely.

"You are a coquette," he says, quietly. There is contempt both in his
look and tone. As she hears it, she suddenly lifts her head, and,
without betraying chagrin, regards him steadfastly.

"Is that so?" she says. "Sometimes I have _thought_ it, but----"

The unmistakable hope her pause contains angers him afresh.

"If you covet the unenviable title," he says, bitterly, "be happy. You
can lay just claim to it. You are more than worthy of it."

"You flatter me," she says, letting a glance so light rest upon him that
it seems but the mere quiver of her eyelids.

"I meant no flattery, believe me."

"I do believe you: I quite understand."