"I dislike the man on principle, but I don't want to pain him," she thought, sighing for the Hautton stern _savoir faire_ and Achilles impenetrability, and goading herself on with the remembrance of duty and General Ormsby, when the opportunity she had resolved to seek presented itself accidentally at a breakfast at Lady George Frangipane's toy villa at Fulham, and she found herself comparatively alone in the rose-garden with Cheveley, for once without Cecil's terrible violet eyes upon her. "Will you allow me a few words with you, Mr. Cheveley?" she asked, in her blandest manner--the kindly hypocrite! The blow must be dealt, but it might as well be softened with a few chloroform fumes, and not struck savagely with an iron-spiked mace. Cheveley raised his eyes. "With me? With the greatest pleasure!" "He is a mere fortune-hunter. I will _not_ spare him, I am resolved," determined Lady Marabout, as she toyed with her parasol-handle, remarked incidentally how unequalled Lady George was in roses, especially in the tea-rose, and dealt blow No. 1. "Mr. Cheveley, I am going to speak to you very frankly. I consider frankness in all things best, myself----" Cheveley bowed, and smiled slightly. "I wish he would answer, it would make it so much easier; he will only look at one with those eyes of his, and certainly they _are_ splendid!" thought Lady Marabout, as she went on quickly, on the same principle as the Chasseurs Indiens approach an abattis at double-quick. "When Lord Rosediamond died last year he left, as probably you are aware, his daughter in my sole care; it was a great responsibility--very great--and I feel, of course, that I shall have to answer to him for my discharge of it." Lady Marabout didn't say whether Rosediamond was accustomed to visit her per medium, and hear her account of her stewardship nightly through a table-claw; but we must suppose that he was. Cheveley bowed again, and didn't inquire, not being spiritually interested. "Why _won't_ he answer?" thought Lady Marabout. "That I have not been blind to your very marked attention to my dear Cecil, I think you must be aware, Mr. Cheveley, and it is on that subject, indeed, that I----" "Wished to speak to me? I understand!" said Cheveley as she paused, with that faint smile, half sad, half proud, that perplexed Lady Marabout. "You are about to insinuate to me gently that those attentions have been exceedingly distasteful to you, exceedingly unacceptable in me; you would remind me that Lady Cecil Ormsby is a beauty and an heiress, and that I am a fortune-hunter, whose designs are seen through and motives found out; you would hint to me that our intercourse must cease: is it not so?"