ide of the door, then quickly put her head through again.

"Connie!--don't!"

"Go away!" repeated Connie, smiling, but determined.

Nora looked at her appealingly, then shut her lips firmly, turned and
went away. Connie spent a few minutes in meditation. She resented the
kind of quasi-guardianship that this clever _backfisch_ assumed towards
her, though she knew it meant that Nora had fallen in love with her. But
it was inconvenient to be so fallen in love with--if it was to mean
interference with her private affairs.

"As if I couldn't protect myself!"

The mere thought of Douglas Falloden was agitating enough, without the
consciousness that a pair of hostile eyes, so close to her, were on
the watch.

She sprang up, and went through her dressing, thinking all the time.
"What do I really feel about him? I am going to ride with him on
Monday--without telling anybody; I vowed I would never put myself in his
power again. And I am deliberately doing it. I am in my guardian's
house, and I am treating Uncle Ewen vilely."

And why?--why these lapses from good manners and good feeling? Was she
after all in love with him? If he asked her to marry him again, as he
had asked her to marry him before, would she now say yes, instead of no?
Not at all! She was further--she declared--from saying yes now, than she
had been under his first vehement attack. And yet she was quite
determined to ride with him. The thought of their rides in the radiant
Christmas sunshine at Cannes came back upon her with a rush. They had
been one continuous excitement, simply because it was Falloden who rode
beside her--Falloden, who after their merry dismounted lunch under the
pines, had swung her to her saddle again--her little foot in his strong
hand--so easily and powerfully. It was Falloden who, when she and two or
three others of the party found themselves by mistake on a dangerous
bridle-path, on the very edge of a steep ravine in the Esterels, and her
horse had become suddenly restive, had thrown himself off his own mount,
and passing between her horse and the precipice, where any sudden
movement of the frightened beast would have sent him to his death, had
seized the bridle and led her into safety. And yet all the time, she had
disliked him almost as much as she had been drawn to him. None of the
many signs of his autocratic and imperious temper had escaped her, and
the pride in her had clashed against the pride in him. To flirt with him
was