Of course I could do nothing but take her little hands into mine and skate away with her at once. We passed Maud again and again skating with Lord Annerley, and the proud cold light in her eyes as she glanced at us in passing half maddened me. Whenever we met her, Lady Olive, out of wanton mischief, forced me to look down into her laughing upturned face and bright eyes, and to do so without an answering smile was impossible; and yet Lady Olive's brilliant chatter and mocking speeches were very pleasant to hear and to respond to, reckless little flirt though she was. She left me at last to skate with Lord Annerley's brother, who had just driven up in a dog-cart with some more men, and then I went to look for Marian and Holdern. Instead, I came face to face round a sharp corner with Maud leaning back in a sledge and gazing idly into the bulrushes, where one of her brother's friends was busy with a penknife. She motioned me languidly to stop, and I obeyed her. "What have you done with Lady Olive?" she inquired, coldly. "Resigned her to a more fortunate man," I answered, circling round her chair. "More fortunate! You haven't much to grumble at! You've been skating with her more than an hour, haven't you?" "Really I don't know," I answered, lightly. "I took little notice of the time." "It passed too pleasantly, I suppose?" "Perhaps so! I so seldom have any one to talk to," I could not help answering. "It is your own fault. You have been avoiding us deliberately for the last three weeks." I folded my arms and looked steadily away from her. "And if I have," I said, slowly, "I think you might congratulate me on my wisdom and strength of mind." She laughed a little hesitating laugh, and, with her head thrown back on the cushion of the sledge, fixed her eyes upon me. "Lady Olive is dangerous, is she?" I looked at her for a full minute without answering. From underneath her sealskin turban hat her blue eyes were looking full into mine, and a mocking smile was playing around her delicate lips. Surely she was beautiful enough to drive any man mad. "No, Lady Olive is not dangerous to me," I answered, deliberately; "you are." A curious change came over her face as she uttered the word. The mocking smile became almost a tender one, and a delicate flush tinged her soft cheeks. But the greatest change was in her eyes. For a moment they flashed into mine with a light shining out of their blue depths which I had never dreamt of seeing there, a soft, warm, almost a loving light. "You are a silly boy," she said, in a low tone, and the colour deepening all the while in her cheeks. "How dare you talk to me like this?" Ah, how dared I? She might well have asked that if she had only known. "I don't know," I said, recklessly. "I shall say more if I stay here any longer." "You? Ah, Captain Hasleton, how beautiful! However did you manage to find so many?"