could not have got in a word had he wished it.

Bluebell turned impatiently away, and snatching up some work, went to a
secluded part of the room, under cover of requiring a shaded lamp there.
"If there is any truth in magnetic attraction," thought she, "Captain
Lascelles shall not come near me, and Bertie shall." She excluded every
other thought from her mind, and _willed_ steadily. Du Meresq became
restless, rose from his chair, and stood aimlessly looking at something
on a table. Bluebell continued her mesmeric efforts, every fibre
quivering. He was coasting in her direction; in another instant he would
be close, and have sat down on the sofa by her. Then she looked up, and
their eyes met and mingled. It might have been for half-an-hour to her
overwrought sensations; the past was forgotten,--she was gazing in a
trance. What impelled Mrs. Rolleston at that moment to say,--"I heard
from Cecil this afternoon, Bertie, and if they catch the boat at ----,
they will be here to-morrow evening?"

The passionate eyes drowning themselves in the love light of Bluebell's
became thoughtful and colder. The spell was broken. Du Meresq turned
away, and began talking to his sister about the expected travellers.

The reaction was painful as the killing of a nerve, and the cause of it
so cruel, that she made no attempt to endure it. A swift glance round
showed her she was unobserved, and springing to the door, she fled from
the room, to weep out her blue eyes in senseless, hopeless repining.

No one noticed her exit but Lascelles, who, going through his social
_devoirs_ with mechanical propriety, had his powers of observation quite
disengaged.

"I can't make the girl out," he soliloquized. "She is aggravatingly
pretty, plays very uncanny, unpleasant music, and looks at me with about
as much interest as if I had called to tune the piano or regulate the
clocks. I wonder if she is expected to go to bed at ten! I fancy there is
a very stringent code of rules for a companion. She was sitting in such a
nice inviting corner, to. Du Meresq seemed sloping off for a spoon; but
when he doubled back, and I was just ready to bear down, she shot out of
the room, like Cinderella when she had 'exceeded her pass.'"

The two friends looked in next morning. They were going in a yacht as far
as the Indian village, and Bertie said if the Colonel and Cecil would be
likely to have arrived, he would come in on his way back. There was some
discussion about