lly:

"We might as well say we've been somewhere together. I mean, if any one
asks."

"Thank you, I don't need to fib," said she.

"I don't mean I need to. Only----" he seemed to find it difficult to
explain.

"I shall merely say I have been for a walk, and you need only say you
have been for a ride--if you don't want to say where you have really
been."

"And if you don't want to mention that you were driving with Ned
Cromarty," he retorted.

"He only very kindly offered me a lift!"

She looked quickly at him as she spoke and as quickly away again. The
glint in her eye seemed to displease him.

"You needn't always be so sharp with me, Cicely," he complained.

"You shouldn't say stupid things."

Both were silent for a space and then in a low mournful voice he said:

"I wish I knew how to win your sympathy, Cicely. You don't absolutely
hate me, do you?"

"Of course I don't hate you. But the way to get a girl's sympathy is not
always to keep asking for it."

He looked displeased again.

"I don't believe you know what I mean!"

"I don't believe you do either."

He grew tender.

"_Your_ sympathy, Cicely, would make all the difference to my life!"

"Now, Malcolm----" she began in a warning voice.

"Oh, I am not asking you to love me again," he assured her quickly. "It
is only sympathy I demand!"

"But you mix them up so easily. It isn't safe to give you anything."

"I won't again!" he assured her.

"Well," she said, though not very sympathetically, "what do you want to
be sympathised with about now?"

"When you offer me sympathy in that tone, I can't give you my
confidence!" he said unhappily.

"Really, Malcolm, how can I possibly tell what your confidence is going
to be beforehand? Perhaps it won't deserve sympathy."

"If you knew the state of my affairs!" he said darkly.

"A few days ago you told me they were very promising," she said with a
little smile.

"So they would be--so they are--if--if only you would care for me,
Cicely!"

"You tell me they are promising when you want me to marry you, and
desperate when you want me to sympathise with you," she said a little
cruelly. "Which am I to believe?"

"Hush! Here's Sir Reginald," he said.

The gentleman who came through a door in the walled garden beside the
house was a fresh-coloured, white-haired man of sixty; slender and not
above middle height, but very erect, and with the carriage of a person a
little conscious of being of some