Blanche! Blanche! you little coquette, you are indeed coming on in the atmosphere of London--you like the Major very much, but you do not like him well enough to marry him--yet you would be unhappy to lose him, you spoilt child!--and so you lead him on like this, and look more bewitching than ever with those downcast eyes and long, silky lashes. Notwithstanding their difference of years, our pair are playing a game very common in society, called “Diamond cut diamond.” “I am a thorough coward in some things,” returned D’Orville, not without a flush of conscious pride, as he remembered how his spirit used to rise with the tide of battle; “like all other cowards, nothing would make me bold but the certainty of success.” He pressed closer to “Water King’s” side, and sank his voice almost to a whisper as he added--“Could I but hope for _that_, I could dare anything. Could I but think that my devotion, my idolatry, was not entirely thrown away, I should be----” The Major stopped short, for Blanche turned pale as death, and her head drooped as if she must have fallen from her horse. What made the girl start and sicken as though an adder had stung her to the quick? What made her lean her little hand for support on “Water King’s” strong, firm neck? Because her brain was reeling, and everything--joy--sunshine--existence--seemed to be passing away. Was it for the mute reproach conveyed by that pale face amongst the crowd--was it for the calm, broad eye, bent on her “more in sorrow than in anger,” and seeming, as it gazed, to bid her an eternal farewell? Frank Hardingstone had seen it all. Unobserved himself among the pedestrians that thronged the footway, he had marked Blanche and her cavalier as they paced slowly down the Ride, had marked the girl’s flush of triumph as her admirer drew closer and closer to her side, had marked that nameless “something” between the pair which people can never entirely conceal when they “understand each other,” and had drawn his own conclusions from the sight. But the decencies of society must be preserved, though the heart is breaking, and Frank drew himself up and took his hat off with a bow that did honour to his qualities as an actor. The old gentleman in gaiters and the tall boy from Eton on either side of him never guessed the amount of mental agony undergone by a fellow-creature whom they actually touched! Civilisation has its tortures as well as barbarism. Blanche, too, returned the courtly gesture, but her weaker nature was scarcely equal to the effort, and had it not been that Uncle Baldwin had fidgeted up, on the instant, in more than his usual hurry to get home, she was conscious that her strength must have given way, and--feel for her, beautiful and daring Amazons who frequent the Ride!--that she must have burst into tears, and made a scene in the Park!