so
widely, and you can see so far across,--_eh bien_, we saw one morning
the deer standing in the edge of the forest just there, one would have
said fifty miles from civilization, not at all as if they were in the
midst of Munich."

"And the lieutenant?" he repeated.

"And then another day the clouds of morning mist were so thick that we
could see their outlines as they lay upon the earth, and ride into them
and ride out of them,--a quite new experience for me."

"But the lieutenant?" he exclaimed impatiently, "the lieutenant? what
did he talk of? what did you speak together of?"

Rosina laughed, nodding merrily over his impatience.

"We talked of the pheasants," she said, "of the deer, of the fog. Are
you satisfied?"

He shrugged his shoulders, his frown lifted.

"It is quite one to me," he said indifferently; "you know that I have
said before that I am not of a _temperament jaloux_."

Then he got up and walked about the room, taking a cigar from his pocket
and holding it unlighted in his mouth.

"May I smoke here?" he asked.

"I don't care if you do."

He returned suddenly to his chair, laid the cigar on the table, and took
her hand again.

"Your cousin is so nice," he told her, as if the recollection of Jack's
charms had necessitated his at once expressing his feelings towards
Jack's cousin.

"When is he coming back?" she asked.

"In one week."

"When does he sail? Do you know?"

"On the nineteenth day, from Genoa."

She quite sprang from her seat.

"Not really!" she exclaimed.

"Yes, so he tell me."

He drew her back into her chair and she forgot the hand which he still
held in her desperate feeling of the instant. She was helplessly choked
with conflicting emotions. October instead of December! That came of
having a cousin!

The kingdom of the other chair advanced its border-line more than two
inches, and she did not appear to notice the bold encroachment.

"What does it matter?" she asked herself bitterly; "in a few days I'm
going, and then I shall never lay eyes on him again," and the tears
welled up thickly at the thought.

"_Qu'est-ce que vous avez?_" he said anxiously; "you must not cry when I
am returned, you know!"

At that she sobbed outright.

He looked at her with an intentness very foreign to his usual
expression, and seemed to weigh two courses of action and deliberate as
to their relative advisability; he ended by laying her hand down gently
and going to the window,