sentment ere they met
again.

CHAPTER III.

GENTLE ANNIE.

The time I've lost in wooing,
In watching and pursuing
The light that lies
In woman's eyes,
Has been my heart's undoing.
--Moore.

"Bluebell," said little Lola, bursting into the nursery, where Freddy,
rather a tyrant in his affections, had insisted on her singing him to
sleep, "Ma says you have got to dine down to-night, and Miss Prosody,

too. Won't she be in a way, for her white muslin never came home from the
wash, and she had begun altering the _barege_; so I asked Felda to tell
her," said Lola, diplomatically. "Do you know Bertie has come?" (His
nieces never prefaced his name with the formality of uncle.) "Oh of
course, you must have seen him at the Rink. Do you like him? He is sure
to like you, at first, at any rate," said Lola, who apparently, like
other lookers-on saw most of the game. "And don't tell, but I believe he
hates Miss Prosody."

"Why?" asked Bluebell, absently.

"Well, one day he was whispering to Cecil, with their heads very near
together. Miss Prosody was looking for a book in a recess behind the
door, close to them; but they never saw her till she moved away, and I
heard Bertie mutter something about an 'inquisitive old devil.' But don't
tell, mind. There's the bell; I must go to tea," _Exit_ Lola, and
Bluebell flew off with some alacrity to her bed-room to prepare.

"Bluebell," cried Cecil, opening the intervening door, "can I lend you
anything?" It pleased her to supply her friend's deficiencies of toilet
when a sudden summons to a domestic field-day had been issued.

"Is it a party?" said the other. "I have only my eternal black-net
dress."

"Just Mr. Vavasour and Captain Deveril," both in her father's regiment;
they never either of them alluded to Bertie. "Here are some fixings for
it," returning with a lapful of silver acorns and oak leaves, "unless you
would prefer butter-cups. What a thing it is to have a complexion like
yours, that everything goes with,"--and Cecil looked with half envy at
the girl, whose blue eyes were bluer, and hair and cheeks brighter, than
usual, as she chattered away with a vivacity, of which, perhaps, the
nattering glances of Captain Du Meresq may have been the secret spring.

Bluebell hadn't the slightest idea of assuming the demure demeanour of
a governess in society; the Rollestons had been her great friends before,
and did not treat her as if