‘Look here, Mr. Charteris,’ I said decidedly, ‘you can do as you like with regard to your cousin, but I wish you would not talk such nonsense to me. I have never left anybody out in the cold. If you are alluding to yourself, all I can say is that I feel for you exactly what I did before’—I was really obliged to make a little reservation here, and whisper inwardly ‘before you spoke to me to-day’—‘we were always excellent friends in my dear mother’s lifetime, and I have no wish to be less to you now. But it is hardly reasonable to suppose that during a separation of five years our tastes may not have grown a little apart. I don’t say they have, but meeting as we have done is really like making a fresh acquaintance, and the old ground has to be gone over again. I wish you would believe, however, that I have none but kindly feelings towards you—why should I have?—and am quite ready to be as good friends as you are.’ I did it very well, I think, because the only effect my communication had was to turn him still more sulky. ‘Pray don’t make any apologies,’ he replied, without looking up from his book; ‘I perfectly understand all you would say, and I think I perfectly understand you into the bargain.’ He was going to be rude now. Cave Charteris was the sort of man who becomes rude directly his self-love is wounded, and that is what I have never put up with from any one. So I gathered my work together, and walked out of the room with dignity, and did not return to it again until the sound of the girls’ voices assured me that I should not be left alone with Mr. Charteris. [Illustration: [Fleuron]] CHAPTER III. THE WOLF. The day wore on, and Charlie Sandilands did not come. I was standing at the window towards evening, wondering at his absence, and blaming my folly in having spoken to him as I did, when I perceived the white hat and red cherries of Miss Markham bobbing up the street. I had taken quite an aversion to this woman. I had detected her in so much falsehood and exaggeration, and I knew her to be so malicious and ill-natured, that I avoided her company whenever it was possible to do so. I should have been obliged, however, to live in my bedroom had I contrived to elude her altogether; for hardly a morning passed without her spending two or three hours at our house. The only days she did not honour us were those on which she knew that Mr. Charteris would be shooting in the forest. On his fishing excursions she was almost sure to track and follow him. When her dear friend, Mrs. Carolus, had told me that her conduct with this gentleman was a scandal, I had been quite unable to believe that any woman of middle age and mediocre attractions could possibly be so foolish as to think herself capable of touching the heart of a young, handsome, worldly man like Cave Charteris. But it was easy for any one to believe it now.