"What should he say? I only met him twice."

"You are prevaricating," gazing at her severely. "Why don't you answer
me honestly?"

"I don't know what _you_ call 'pretty things.'"

"Yes, you do. Did he tell you your eyes were _deep, deep_ wells of love,
and that your face was full of soul?"

"No, he did not," says Monica, somewhat indignantly; "_certainly_ not.
The idea!"

"Well, that is what Percival said to the girl _he_ loved in the book I
was reading yesterday," says Kit, rather cast down.

"Then I'm very glad Mr. Desmond isn't like Percival."

"I daresay he is nicer," says Kit, artfully. Then she tucks her arm into
her sister's, and looks fondly in her face. "He must have said
_something_ to you," she says. "Darling love, why won't you tell your
own Kitten all about it?"

A little smile quivers round Monica's lips.

"Well, I will, then," she says. In her heart I believe she is glad to
confide in somebody, and why not in Kit the sympathetic? "First, he made
me feel he was delighted to meet me again. Then he asked me to go for a
walk _alone_ with him; then he said he was--my lover!"

"Oh!" says Kit, screwing up her small face with delight.

"And then he asked me to meet him again to-day with _you_."

"With _me_! I think that was very delicate of him." She is evidently
flattered by this notice of her existence. Plainly, if not _the_ rose in
his estimation, she is to be treated with the respect due to the rose's
sister. It is all charming! she feels wafted upwards, and incorporated,
as it were, in a real love affair. Yes, she will be the guardian angel
of these thwarted lovers.

"And what did you say?" she asks, with a gravity that befits the
occasion.

"I refused," in a low tone.

"To meet him?"

"Yes."

"With _me_?" says this dragon of propriety.

"Yes."

"But why?"

"Because of Aunt Priscilla." And then she tells her all about Aunt
Priscilla's speech in the carriage, and her reply to it.

"I never heard such a rubbishy request in my life!" says the younger
Miss Beresford, disdainfully. "It is really beneath notice. And when all
is told it means nothing. As _I_ read it, it seems you have only
promised to forget you ever spoke to Mr. Desmond: you haven't promised
never to speak to him again." Thus the little Jesuit.

"That was not what Aunt Priscilla meant."

"If she meant anything, it was folly. And, after all, what is this
dreadful quarrel between us and the Desmonds all about? It lives