A slight change took place in his face, as if a cloud had obscured the sun. He looked at her in silence; it would have been hard to say which was the prettier--she or the flowers. It was seen when he spoke that the change had extended to his voice.

"So there is someone?"

"Oh dear, yes; there always has been, and there always will be."

"Your uncle gave me to understand that the field was clear."

"My uncle Geoffrey Hovenden is--I'm sorry to have to say it of a relation of mine--a Machiavellian old gentleman. No one is better acquainted with my piteous plight than he is; but because he wants you, and wants me to want you, he says nothing about it. Do you mean to say you don't know who it is?"

"Do you suppose that if I had even guessed that there was another I should have said what I have done?"

"There's no telling; his own brother knew all about it, but that didn't stop him."

"Who is the lucky man?"

"Lucky! Pray do let us keep clear of the language of exaggeration, but I doubt if there is a more unlucky creature on the face of God's earth."

"You pique my curiosity; standing with you as he does I can hardly conceive of him as unlucky. Do I know him?"

"You did, if you don't now."

"You speak in riddles, at which I was never any good."

"Sydney Beaton."

He seemed to start away from her. This time not only his face, but his whole bearing, the entire man, seemed to change.

"Miss Forster, are you in earnest?"

His tone, his manner seemed all at once to have grown cold; he could hardly have held his figure more stiffly erect.

"And pray why shouldn't I be in earnest?"

"You place me in a difficult position; what answer am I to give to that?"

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