"Not yet," he said, smiling down at her with a very kindly look in his stern dark eyes. "Do you know you have given me a great deal of pleasure to-day? You have trusted me to do a commission for you--a delicate bit of work too--and that shows that you don't consider me altogether worthless." "You may be sure that I do not." "Yes, we are friends. I have some satisfaction in that thought. Do you know that you are the first woman who has ever made a _friend_ of me? who has ever trusted me, and taught me--for a moment or two--to respect myself? It is the newest sensation I have had for years." "Not the sensation of respecting yourself, I hope?" "Yes, indeed. You don't know--you will never know--how I've been handicapped in life. Can you manage to be friendly with me even when I don't do exactly as you approve? You are at liberty to tell me with cousinly frankness what you dislike." "On that condition we can be friends," said Janetta, smiling and tendering her hand. She meant to say good-bye, but he retained the little hand in his own and went on talking. "How about the boy? You'll take him for a few hours every day?" "You really mean it?" "I do, indeed. Name your own terms." She blushed a little, but was resolved to be business-like. "You know I can't afford to do it for nothing," she said. "He can come from ten to one, if you like to give me----" and and then she mentioned a sum which Wyvis thought miserably inadequate. "Absurd!" he cried. "Double that, and then take him! When can he come?" "Next week, if you like. But I mean what I say----" "So do I, and as my will is stronger than yours I shall have my own way." Janetta shook her head, and, having by this time got her hand free, she managed to say good-bye, and left the house much more cheerfully than she had entered it. Strange to say, she had a curious feeling of trust in Wyvis Brand's promise to help her; it seemed to her that he was a man who would endeavor at all costs to keep his word. CHAPTER XXI. CUTHBERT'S ROMANCE. Janetta was hardly surprised when, two days later, she was asked to give a private audience to Mr. Cuthbert Brand. She had not yet told Nora of the course that she had pursued, for she was indeed rather unnecessarily ashamed of it. "It was just like a worldly mamma asking a young man his intentions about her daughter," she said to herself, with a whimsical smile. "Probably nothing will come of it but a cessation of these silly little attentions to Nora." But she felt a little shy and constrained when she entered the drawing-room, and, while shaking hands with her cousin, she did not lift her eyes to his face. When she had taken a seat, however, and managed to steal a glance at him, she was half-provoked, half-reassured. Cuthbert's mobile face was full of a merry, twinkling humor, and expressed no penitence at all. She was so much astonished that she forgot her shyness, and looked at him inquiringly without opening her lips.