"What nonsense you talk, Olive!" said Maud, carelessly, but with a slight flush rising into her cheeks. "As if it could make the slightest possible difference to me which colour Mr. Arbuthnot prefers in chrysanthemums!" There was a distinct vein of contempt in her concluding sentence, and Lady Olive, noticing it, looked at us both in surprise. "It is my positive conviction," she declared, with mock seriousness, "that, notwithstanding Mr. Arbuthnot's high-flown repudiation, you two have been quarrelling." Maud Devereux turned impatiently away, with a scornful shrug of her shoulders, and walked slowly towards the house. Lady Olive started to follow her, but at the gate she paused. "Mr. Arbuthnot, come here, I want to speak to you." I retraced my steps, of course, and stood by her side. "Well?" She stood on tiptoe and whispered--quite an unnecessary proceeding, for Maud was a dozen yards away. "Mr. Arbuthnot, what have you and Maud been quarrelling about?" I turned round so abruptly that our heads knocked together and my moustache brushed her cheek. "Mr. Arbuthnot!" "It wasn't my fault," I assured her, truthfully. "Sure!" She was looking up at me with a half-coquettish, altogether inviting smile. "Quite. Shall I show you how it happened?" I asked, stooping down till my face was very close to hers. "What colour chrysanthemum are you going to wear this evening, Mr. Arbuthnot?" she asked, rather irrelevantly. "Can you ask? Bronze, of course." "Well, then--yes--I think you may show me--just so that it sha'n't happen again, you know," she added, with laughing eyes. And so I showed her, just as a matter of precaution, and received for my reward a not very hard box on the ears, and a saucy, mock-angry backward glance as she broke away from, me and hurried after Maud. Then I strode across the park, angry with myself, yet fiercely exultant, for I knew that Maud had been lingering in the shrubbery alone, and had seen us. She would know now, if she did not before, that the grief which she must have read in my face when she had returned so unexpectedly was none of her causing, else had I never let my lips rest for a second on Lady Olive's cheek. CHAPTER XV A FIGHT FOR LIFE In less than an hour I was back at Devereux Court. The gong was booming through the hall as I reached the drawing-room, and the little party had already risen to their feet. Maud's hand was resting on the coat-sleeve of a man scarcely as tall as herself, with a fair, insipid-looking face and weak eyes--whom I knew at once must be Lord Annerley. Sir Francis, who was suffering from a bad attack of gout, was leaning half on his stick, half on Lady Olive's bare, white shoulder; but, at my entrance, he withdrew his hand, and she stepped back, rubbing her arm with a comical air of relief. "Just in time, Arbuthnot! Come and give me your arm, there's a good fellow. Annerley, this is Mr. Arbuthnot, my agent."