e Bluebell. I cannot tell what
spell that syren had used to attract his footsteps so unerringly, for,
little accustomed as he was to resist female influence, in thought at
least Du Meresq was loyal enough to Cecil.

He made no attempt to kiss her, as he would have done before in a similar
situation, but talked a while in that half-fond, half-bantering manner
that had misled the inexperienced child. The sun poured its level rays
upon them, and a little brown snake, with a litter of young, crawled from
beneath the log. This occasioned a hasty change of quarters, and they
found another seat o'ershadowed by a tangle of blackberries. It was very
secluded and still, and here, with her whole soul, in her eyes, Bluebell
abruptly asked Bertie her dreaded question.

Rather taken back, he answered evasively. But the ice once broken, she
was not to be turned from her purpose, and repeated, as if it were a
stereotyped form of words she had been practising, "I only wish to ask
one single thing, are you engaged to Cecil?"

Du Meresq was no coxcomb. He was distressed at the repressed agitation in
Bluebell's voice, her hueless face, and the hopeless look in eyes he
remembered so beaming, and for the moment heartily wished he had never
seen her.

"How young she looks, with her lap full of flowers. Like an unhappy
child," thought he remorsefully. "I must tell her the truth; she'll soon
get over it."

Very gently he took her hand, and said, gravely,--"I asked Cecil
yesterday to marry me, and she said yes."

Bluebell staggered to her feet, with perhaps a sudden impulse of flight,
but so unsteadily that Du Meresq involuntarily threw a supporting arm
round her. At that moment Lola, in search of blackberries, and herself
concealed by the bush she was rifling, peeped through the brambles, and
remained a petrified and curious observer.

Bluebell, struggling for composure, tried to speak, but the effort only
precipitated an irrepressible flood of tears, and Du Meresq, grieved and
self-reproachful, in his attempts to console her, used the fatal words
that Lola afterwards repeated to Cecil. The child escaped without her
presence being detected.

Bluebell's emotion had passed over like a storm that clears the
atmosphere. It left her calm and cold, and only anxious to be away
from Du Meresq.

There is a bracing power in knowing the worst. He had gained her
affections without the most distant intention of matrimony, and
resentment and sham