."

"Was there not a little malice--just a very little--on your part to
begin it?" he asked, smiling.

"Malice? Why? Just because I wanted to see how you and Alixe Ruthven
would behave when thrust into each other's arms? Oh, Captain
Selwyn--what a harmless little jest of mine to evoke all that bitterness
you so smilingly poured out on me! . . . But I forgave you; I'll forgive
you more than that--if you ask me. Do you know"--and she laid her small
head on one side and smiled at him out of her pretty doll's eyes--"do
you know that there are very few things I might not be persuaded to
pardon you? Perhaps"--with laughing audacity--"there are not any at all.
Try, if you please."

"Then you surely will forgive me for what I have come to ask you," he
said lightly. "Won't you?"

"Yes," she said, her pink-and-white prettiness challenging him from
every delicate feature--"yes--I will pardon you--on one condition."

"And what is that, Mrs. Fane?"

"That you are going to ask me something quite unpardonable!" she said
with a daring little laugh. "For if it's anything less improper than an
impropriety I won't forgive you. Besides, there'd be nothing to forgive.
So please begin, Captain Selwyn."

"It's only this," he said: "I am wondering whether you would do anything
for me?"

"_Any_thing! _Merci_! Isn't that extremely general, Captain Selwyn? But
you never can tell; ask me."

So he bent forward, his clasped hands between his knees, and told her
very earnestly of his fears about Gerald, asking her to use her
undoubted influence with the boy to shame him from the card-tables,
explaining how utterly disastrous to him and his family his present
course was.

"He is very fond of you, Mrs. Fane--and you know how easy it is for a
boy to be laughed out of excesses by a pretty woman of experience. You
see I am desperately put to it or I would never have ventured to trouble
you--"

"I see," she said, looking at him out of eyes bright with
disappointment.

"Could you help us, then?" he asked pleasantly.

"Help _us_, Captain Selwyn? Who is the 'us,' please?"

"Why, Gerald and me--and his family," he added, meeting her eyes. The
eyes began to dance with malice.

"His family," repeated Rosamund; "that is to say, his sister, Miss
Erroll. His family, I believe, ends there; does it not?"

"Yes, Mrs. Fane."

"I see. . . . Miss Erroll is naturally worried over him. But I wonder
why she did not come to me herself instead of sendi