nner?" she asked, in her turn.

"Rather." Then he looked up at her, but she had stretched her slim
silk-shod feet to the fender, and her head was bent aside, so that he
could see only the curve of the cheek and the little close-set ear
under its ruddy mass of gold.

"Who was there?" she asked, too, carelessly.

For a moment he did not speak; under his bronzed cheek the flat muscles
stirred. Had some meddling, malicious fool ventured to whisper an unfit
jest to this young girl? Had a word--or a smile and a phrase cut in
two--awakened her to a sorry wisdom at his expense? Something had
happened; and the idea stirred him to wrath--as when a child is wantonly
frightened or a dumb creature misused.

"What did you ask me?" he inquired gently.

"I asked you who was there, Captain Selwyn."

He recalled some names, and laughingly mentioned his dinner partner's
preference for Harmon. She listened absently, her chin nestling in her
palm, only the close-set, perfect ear turned toward him.

"Who led the cotillion?" he asked.

"Jack Ruthven--dancing with Rosamund Fane."

She drew her feet from the fender and crossed them, still turned away
from him; and so they remained in silence until again she shifted her
position, almost impatiently.

"You are very tired," he said.

"No; wide awake."

"Don't you think it best for you to go to bed?"

"No. But you may go."

And, as he did not stir: "I mean that you are not to sit here because I
do." And she looked around at him.

"What has gone wrong, Eileen?" he said quietly.

He had never before used her given name, and she flushed up.

"There is nothing the matter, Captain Selwyn. Why do you ask?"

"Yes, there is," he said.

"There is not, I tell you--"

"--And, if it is something you cannot understand," he continued
pleasantly, "perhaps it might be well to ask Nina to explain it to you."

"There is nothing to explain."

"--Because," he went on, very gently, "one is sometimes led by malicious
suggestion to draw false and unpleasant inferences from harmless
facts--"

"Captain Selwyn--"

"Yes, Eileen."

But she could not go on; speech and thought itself remained sealed; only
a confused consciousness of being hurt remained--somehow to be remedied
by something he might say--might deny. Yet how could it help her for him
to deny what she herself refused to believe?--refused through sheer
instinct while ignorant of its meaning.

Even if he had done what she heard Rosa