"Oh yes!" said Una, shrugging her shoulders, "but _I_ shan't let _you_!" She flung her arms round Amethyst and kissed her with burning lips, then scuttled away into her own room. CHAPTER SEVEN. NO CUNNING TO BE STRANGE. "When do you suppose Amethyst will find my lady out?" said Kattern and Tory, as they started for the primrose-picking the next day, and Amethyst ran back again to beg her mother to drive round to the wood and join them. "Not yet," said Tory, "my lady is making up to her, as much as ever she did to any man she ever went in for, and Amethyst would believe black was white just at present." "I'd like to see her face, if we told her what my lady is really like." "You are not to tell her," said Una, suddenly turning round upon them, "I won't have it. Let her be happy while she can; _I_ shall tell her, when I think it proper." Una looked languid and dull to-day. She did not care for gathering primroses, and she was not strong enough to enjoy long out-door expeditions. She watched Amethyst, with a look on her face, and thoughts in her heart, which would much have astonished the elder girl if she had noticed the one, or guessed at the other. Amethyst good-naturedly patronised Kate and Gertie Leigh, girls matching in age with Kattern and Tory; she made friends with their governess, who had recently been the head girl at a rival school to Saint Etheldred's, and was discussing the honours respectively gained by the two institutions at all the recent examinations, with the heartiest interest, when the party was enlarged by the arrival of Miss Riddell and her nephew, and Mrs Leigh and her son. Lady Haredale, Major Fowler, and some of the other guests at Cleverley also turned up. It was a day of rare spring loveliness, blue sky, young green leaves, and springing flowers. "A day of beginnings," Sylvester Riddell said, as he noted the budding oak trees, the unfolding blossoms, the opening intercourse that was still in its first spring. "You like the woods?" he said to Amethyst. "Oh yes," she said, "I like everything here; you can't think how pleasant beginning to be at home is." "I suppose you are making several beginnings," he said. "Yes," she answered, "I am beginning to know my sisters--and every one here--and next week I am going to my first ball." "Beginnings are very charming when they do not imply endings," said Sylvester tritely; but he was thinking so much of the lovely slender girl before him that he spoke half mechanically. "That can never be," said Amethyst, with sudden gravity. "My school-days are ended, and my living with my aunt. Beginnings must come out of endings--but then they _are_ beginnings," she added; and stooping, she picked a primrose, round which still lingered the large faded leaves of last year, and showed it to him, with a grave smile on her soft young lips.