om the grass, 'you have
given me my rights; I will begin to exercise them at once. I must take
you home, the clouds are coming up again, and on the way will you kindly
give me a full, true, and minute account of these two months during
which you have been so dangerously left to your own devices?'

She hesitated, and began to speak with difficulty, her eyes on the
ground. But by the time they were in the main Shanmoor path again, and
she was not so weakly dependent on his physical aid, her spirits too
returned. Pacing along with her hands behind her, she began by degrees
to throw into her accounts of her various visits and performances plenty
of her natural malice.

And after a bit, as that strange storm of feeling which had assailed her
on the mountain top abated something of its bewildering force, certain
old grievances began to raise very lively heads in her. The smart of
Lady Fauntleroy's ball was still there; she had not yet forgiven him all
those relations; and the teasing image of Lady Florence woke up in her.

'It seems to me' he said at last dryly, as he opened a gate for her not
far from Burwood, 'that you have been making yourself agreeable to a
vast number of people. In my new capacity of censor, I should like to
warn you that there is nothing so bad for the character as universal
popularity.'

'_I_ have not got a thousand and one important cousins!' she exclaimed,
her lip curling. 'If I want to please, I must take pains, else "nobody
minds me."'

He looked at her attentively, his handsome face aglow with animation.

'What can you mean by that?' he said slowly.

But she was quite silent, her head well in air.

'Cousins?' he repeated. 'Cousins? And clearly meant as a taunt at me!
Now when did you see my cousins? I grant that I possess a monstrous and
indefensible number. I have it. You think that at Lady Fauntleroy's ball
I devoted myself too much to my family, and too little to--'

'Not at all!' cried Rose hastily, adding, with charming incoherence,
while she twisted a sprig of honeysuckle in hex restless fingers,
'_Some_ cousins of course are pretty.'

He paused an instant; then a light broke over his face, and his burst
of quiet laughter was infinitely pleasant to hear. Rose got redder and
redder. She realized dimly that she was hardly maintaining the spirit
of their contract, and that he was studying her with eyes inconveniently
bright and penetrating.

'Shall I quote to you,' he said, 'a sent