tarily.

His companion looked up, smiling, her eyes dwelling on his with a
strange effect of intimacy, wholly flattering, wholly, indeed,
distracting to common sense.

"Yes--you are fortunate," she answered, speaking slowly. "And some day,
Richard, I think you will come to know that."

Sudden comprehension, sudden recognition struck the young man--very
literally struck him a most unwelcome buffet.

"Oh! I see--I understand," he exclaimed, "you are my cousin--you are
Madame de Vallorbes."

For a moment his sense of disappointment was so keen, he was minded to
turn his horse and incontinently ride away. The misery of that episode
of his boyhood set its tooth very shrewdly in him even yet. It seemed
the most cruelly ironical turn of fate that this entrancing, this
altogether worshipful, stranger should prove to be one and the same as
the little dancer of long ago with blush-roses in her hat.

But though the colour deepened somewhat in the lady's cheeks, she did
not lower her eyes, nor did they lose their smiling importunity. A
little ardour, indeed, heightened the charm of her manner--an ardour of
delicate battle, as of one whose honour has been ever so slightly
touched.

"Certainly, I am your cousin, Helen de Vallorbes," she replied. "You
are not sorry for that, Richard, are you? At this moment I am
increasingly glad to be your cousin--though not perhaps so very
particularly glad to be Helen de Vallorbes." Then she added,
rapidly:--"We are here in England for a few weeks, my father and I.
Troublesome, distressing things had happened, and he perceived I needed
change. He brought me away. London proved a desert and a dust-heap.
There was no solace, no distraction from unpleasant thoughts to be
found there. So we telegraphed and came down last night to the kind
people at Newlands. Naturally my father wanted to see Aunt Katherine. I
desired to see her also, well understood, for I have heard so much of
her talent and her great beauty. But I knew they--the brother and
sister--would wish to speak of the past and find their happiness in
being very sad about it all. At our age--yours and mine--the sadness of
any past one may possess is a good deal too present with one still to
afford in the least consoling subject of conversation." Madame de
Vallorbes spoke with a certain vehemence. "Don't you think so,
Richard?" she demanded.

And Richard could but answer, very much out of his heart, that he did
indeed think so.

She