about to leave in charge of a waterman. Elizabeth stretched a finger at
arm's-length, issuing directions, which Mr. Rolles took up and worded
further to the man, for the sake of emphasis; and he, rather than
Elizabeth, was guilty of the half-start at sight of the persons who were
approaching.

'My nephew, you should know, is intended for a working soldier,' said
Lady Camper; 'I like that sort of soldier best.'

General Ople drooped his shoulders at the personal compliment.

She resumed. 'His pay is a matter of importance to him. You are aware of
the smallness of a subaltern's pay.

'I,' said the General, 'I say I feel my poor half-pay, having always
been a working soldier myself, very important, I was saying, very
important to me!'

'Why did you retire?'

Her interest in him seemed promising. He replied conscientiously,
'Beyond the duties of General of Brigade, I could not, I say I could
not, dare to aspire; I can accept and execute orders; I shrink from
responsibility!'

'It is a pity,' said she, 'that you were not, like my nephew Reginald,
entirely dependent on your profession.'

She laid such stress on her remark, that the General, who had just
expressed a very modest estimate of his abilities, was unable to
reject the flattery of her assuming him to be a man of some fortune. He
coughed, and said, 'Very little.' The thought came to him that he might
have to make a statement to her in time, and he emphasized, 'Very little
indeed. Sufficient,' he assured her, 'for a gentlemanly appearance.'

'I have given you your warning,' was her inscrutable rejoinder, uttered
within earshot of the young people, to whom, especially to Elizabeth,
she was gracious. The damsel's boating uniform was praised, and her
sunny flush of exercise and exposure.

Lady Camper regretted that she could not abandon her parasol: 'I freckle
so easily.'

The General, puzzling over her strange words about a warning, gazed at
the red rose of art on her cheek with an air of profound abstraction.

'I freckle so easily,' she repeated, dropping her parasol to defend her
face from the calculating scrutiny.

'I burn brown,' said Elizabeth.

Lady Camper laid the bud of a Falcot rose against the young girl's
cheek, but fetched streams of colour, that overwhelmed the momentary
comparison of the sunswarthed skin with the rich dusky yellow of the
rose in its deepening inward to soft brown.

Reginald stretched his hand for the privileged flower,