could make up his mind quickly and
decidedly, a virtue sadly wanting in many of us. His reservation had
been put in mechanically in the first instance, but Blanche's
persistence made him now resolute not to commit himself to an unlimited
promise. Except unthinkingly, people do not make promises of this
nature, any more than they give blank cheques, the filling-in of which
in unwarrantable fashion might occasion much grief and tribulation to
the reckless donor.

Miss Bloxam felt a little indignant at not being able to carry her
point, but she knew just as well as Lionel did that she was insisting
on the exorbitant. "Still," she argued, "if he were really in love
with me he would not mind promising to grant me whatever I asked.

"I want to know," she said at length, "what was the present Miss
Chipchase made you?"

"Good Heavens!" replied Lionel, laughing, "is that all you require?
She sent me these solitaires for saving her bracelet at Rockcliffe; are
they not pretty ones?" And, pulling back his coat-sleeve, Beauchamp
exhibited the studs at his wrists.

"Very," returned Blanche. "But that is not quite all: what is the
commission she has given you?"

Beauchamp looked a little grave at this question. This commission was
in reality the mildest of mysteries; but he saw that Blanche believed
it to be of far greater importance.

"I cannot tell you," he replied.

"May I ask why?"

"Certainly. I cannot tell you because I have promised not to mention
it. You, of course, would not wish me to break my word?"

"Decidedly not," rejoined Miss Bloxam. "My curiosity has led me into a
great indiscretion. But the game is getting interesting. Surely Jim's
side are having the best of it now?" And Miss Bloxam, turning
half-round in her seat, devoted her attention to the polo-players with
laudable persistency. If Blanche Bloxam was showing herself somewhat
childish and unreasonable--for there could be no doubt that the young
lady had turned away from Lionel more or less in a huff--it must be
remembered that she was very much in earnest in her love affair, that
she was jealous of Sylla Chipchase, and that though she believed Lionel
Beauchamp loved her, he had not as yet declared himself. She had
foolishly, and perhaps whimsically, regarded this as a test question,
and she had been answered in the negative. I do not know that she was
out-of-the-way foolish. Maidens like Marguerite have played "He loves
me, he loves m