eat. She fixed
me so long that her eyes seemed to glow out of the pale face which made
an oval patch against the darkness of the trees. Irma's face was only
starlit, but her eyes shone by their own light.

"Yes, I will trust you," she said at last. "I saw you the day when the
mob came. You were ashamed, and would have helped me if you could. Even
then I liked your face. I did not forget you, and when Agnes Anne spoke
of her brother who was afraid of nothing, I was happy that you should
come. I wanted you to come."

The words made my heart leap, but the next moment I knew that I was a
fool, and might have known better. This was no Gerty Gower, to put her
hand on your arm unasked, and let her face say what her lips had not the
words to utter.

"I want a friend," she said; "I need a friend--a big brother--nothing
else, remember. If you think I want to be made love to, you are
mistaken. And, if you do, there will be an end. You cannot help me that
way. I have no use for what people call love. But I have a mission, and
that mission is my brother, Sir Louis. If you will consent to help me, I
shall love you as I love him, and you--can care about me--as you care
about Agnes Anne!"

Now I did not see what was the use of bringing Agnes Anne into the
business. At home she and I were quarrelling about half our time. But
since it was to be that or nothing, of course I was not such a fool as
to choose the nothing.

All the same, after the promising beginning, I was enormously
disappointed, and if only it had been lighter, doubtless my chagrin
would have showed on my face. It seemed to me (not knowing) the
death-blow to all my hopes. I did not then understand that in all the
unending and necessarily eternal game of chess, which men and women play
one against the other, there is no better opening than this.

But I was still crassly ignorant, intensely disappointed. I even swore
that I would not have given a brass farthing to be "cared about" by Irma
as I myself did about Agnes Anne.

Dimly, however, I did feel, even then, that there was a fallacy
somewhere. And that, however much human beings with youthful hearts and
answering eyes may pretend they are brother and sister, there is
something deep within them that moves the Previous Question--as we are
used to say in the Eden Valley Debating Parliament, which Mr. Oglethorpe
and my father have organized on the model of that in the _Gentleman's
Magazine_.

But Irma, at least, ha