So he would follow her obediently, with his longing still ungratified, and always looking forward to a luckier to-morrow. Whoever had been her instructor, Miss Nora Abinger had certainly learnt the art of keeping a man at her feet. Perhaps the same thought struck him also, for one day, when they were alone together, he asked her if he were the only man she had ever loved. Nora looked at him with the keenest appreciation lurking in the corners of her mirthful eyes. ‘Are you the only man I’ve ever loved, Ilfracombe?’ she repeated after him. ‘Well, I don’t think so.’ ‘You don’t think so? Good heavens, do you mean to tell me you’ve had lovers beside myself!’ he exclaimed, getting into a sudden fury. ‘My dear boy, do you know how old I am? Twenty, last birthday! What are you dreaming of? Do you suppose all the men in Malta are deaf, dumb, and blind? Of course I’ve had other lovers--scores of them!’ ‘But you didn’t love them, Nora; not as you love me,’ Lord Ilfracombe asked anxiously. ‘Well, before I can answer that question, we must decide how much I _do_ love you. Anyway, I didn’t marry any of them, though I might have had a dozen husbands by this time if I had accepted them all. As it is, you see, I chucked them over.’ ‘But were you engaged to any of them, Nora?’ he persisted. She might easily have said ‘no,’ but it was not in this girl’s nature to deceive. She was frankly naughty, defiantly so, some people might have said, and rather glorified in her faults than otherwise. Besides, she dearly loved to tease her lover, and tyrannise over him. ‘Oh, yes I was,’ she replied, ‘that is, I had a kind of a sort of an engagement with several of them. But it amounted to nothing. There was only one of the whole lot I shed a single tear for.’ ‘And pray, who may he have been?’ demanded Lord Ilfracombe, with a sudden access of dignity. ‘Find it out for yourself,’ she said pertly. ‘Oh, he _was_ a dear, quite six foot high, with the goldenest golden hair you ever saw; not a bit like yours. I call yours flaxen. It’s too pale, but his had a rich tinge in it, and he had such lovely eyes, just like a summer night, I nearly cried myself blind when he left Malta.’ ‘It seems to me,’ said the earl, with the same offended air he had assumed before, ‘that I am _de trop_ here, since the recollection of this fascinating admirer is still so fresh. Perhaps I had better resign in favour of him while there is still time?’ ‘Just as you like!’ returned Nora indifferently. ‘I have no wish to bias your movements in any way. But if you did not want an answer, why did you put the question to me?’ ‘But, Nora, my darling, you did not mean what you said? You did not waste any of your precious tears on this brute, surely? You said it only to tease me?’