ng you with your skating the other night?"

Dinah's eyes shone again with a quick and ominous light. "He helped you
with your ski-ing too, didn't he?" she said.

"He did, dear. I had a most enjoyable afternoon." Rose smiled again as
over some private reminiscence. "He told me he thought you were coming
on, in fact he seems to think that you have the makings of quite a good
skater. It's a pity your opportunities are so limited, dear." Rose paused
to utter a soft laugh.

"I don't see anything funny in that," remarked Dinah.

"No, no! Of course not. I was only smiling at the way in which he
referred to you. 'That little brown cousin of yours' he said, 'makes me
think of a water-vole, there one minute and gone the next.' He seemed to
think you a rather amusing child, as of course you are." Rose put up a
delicate hand and playfully caressed the glowing cheek nearest to her. "I
told him you were not any relation, but just a dear little friend of mine
who had never seen anything of the world before. And he laughed and said,
'That is why she looks like a chocolate baby out of an Easter egg.'"

"Anything else?" said Dinah, repressing an urgent desire to shiver at the
kindly touch.

"No, I don't think so. We had more important matters to think of and talk
about. He is a man who has travelled a good deal, and we found that we
had quite a lot in common, having visited the same places and regarded
many things from practically the same point of view. He took the trouble
to be very entertaining," said Rose, with a pretty blush. "And his
trouble was not misspent. I am convinced that he enjoyed the afternoon
even more than I did. We also enjoyed the evening," she added. "He is an
excellent dancer. We suited each other perfectly."

"Did you find him good at sitting out?" asked Dinah unexpectedly.

Rose looked at her enquiringly, but her eyes were fixed upon the distant
mist-capped mountains. There was nothing in her aspect to indicate what
had prompted the question.

"What a funny thing to ask!" she said, with her soft laugh. "No; we
enjoyed dancing much too much to waste any time sitting out. He gave you
one dance, I believe?"

"No," Dinah said briefly. "I gave him one."

She turned from her contemplation of the mountains. An odd little smile
very different from Rose's smile of complacency hovered at the corners of
her mouth. She gave Rose a swift and comprehensive glance, then slipped
her pen into her writing-case and close