Luncheon passed agreeably for Rose. She was the centre of looks, desires and conversation. M. Lanfranc gallanted without bad taste. She would laugh and then, with sudden seriousness, accept the contact of some gesture of M. Hervart's, who was sitting next to her. Leonor confined himself to a few curt phrases, which were meant to sum up the more ingenuous remarks of his fellow guests. He had thought he could treat this girl with contempt, but her eyes, he found, excited him. By dint of trying to seem a superior being, he succeeded in looking like a thoroughly disagreeable one. Rose was frightened of him. "How cold he is," she thought. "One could never talk or play with a man so sure of all his movements. He would always win." Several times, with innocent unconsciousness, she looked at M. Hervart. "How well I have chosen! Here is a man who is younger than he, nearer my own age, and yet each of his words and gestures brings me closer to Xavier. I feel that it will be always like that. Who can compete with him? Xavier, I love you." She leaned forward to reach a jug and as she did so whispered full in M. Hervart's face, "Xavier, I love you." M. Hervart pretended to choke. His redness of face was put down to a cherry stone; Lanfranc gave vent to some feeble joking on the subject. As luncheon was nearing its end, she said with a perverse frankness: "M. Hervart, will you come with me and see if everything's all right down in the garden?" "I am having coffee served out of doors," Mme. Des Boys explained. Lanfranc expatiated on the beauties of this country custom. As soon as they were hidden from view behind the shrubbery, Rose, without a word, took M. Hervart by the shoulders and offered him her lips. It was a long kiss. Xavier clasped the girl in his arms and with a passion in which there was much amorous art, drank in her soul. When he lifted his head, he felt confused: "I have been giving the kiss of a happy lover, when what was asked for was a betrothal kiss. What will she think of me?" Rose was already looking at the rustic table. When M. Hervart rejoined her, she greeted him with the sweetest of smiles. "Was that what she wanted then?" M. Hervart wondered. "Rose," he said aloud, "I love you, I love you." "I hope you do," she replied. "Oh, how I should like to be alone with you now!" "I wouldn't. I should be afraid." This answer set M. Hervart thinking: "Does she know as much about it as all that? Is it an invitation?"