"Mamma trusts me to look after myself. Indeed, she asks my advice more often than I do hers. Mamma hasn't a very decided character, and I'm afraid I have." Rex was silent. "Are you shocked?" said Imogen with a touch of apology, or at least timidity. And she glanced up at him from under her long eyelashes, like a naughty but repentant child. "`Shocked?' no. That tone about one's elders is too common nowadays to shock," he said quietly. "But I own it would disappoint me in you if I thought you really meant it. It was your tenderness to your mother that--that first"--"made me feel an interest in you," he was going to have said, but the words struck him as priggish and patronising. Imogen blushed, but he did not see her blush, and he went on speaking: "It reminded me a little of my own sister," he said. "She was my elder sister, and my mother was an invalid for many years. One of my clearest remembrances since early boyhood is of Angey's unfailing care and tenderness about our mother." He seemed to be "thinking back," as I have heard a child express it. Imogen, glancing up again, caught the look in his face and respected it. "You say `was.' But your _sister_ is not dead?" she hazarded after a little. "Oh no," he replied, recollecting himself with a little start, "she is living. But I am in great anxiety about her just now. She is soon to undergo a very serious--very, very serious operation on her eyes. And we shall not know for months if it is successful. I am very foolish, I daresay, but I can scarcely bear to speak of it. I had a letter this morning--my poor Angey." "I am _so_ sorry," said Imogen softly. "What is her name?" she added. "I should like to think of her by it. Is it Angela?" "Not quite. It is even more fantastic. It is Evangeline. Eva some people call her, but her home name has always been Angey. Evangeline is too much of a good thing in the way of names." "It is very pretty. And `Eva' is very pretty," said Imogen, simply. Major Winchester smiled. "Yes, `Eva' is very nice," he said. "Of course, it is the diminutive of other names as well as my sister's." Then he seemed to wish to change the subject. "Don't think me impertinent, Miss Wentworth, apropos of what you were saying about having a `decided character.' Young people--_very_ young people especially," and here he gave a slightly deprecating smile--"often make a mistake between impulsiveness and self-will _and_ decision of character, much in the same way that obstinacy and firmness are often confused." "I am not so _very_ young, Major Winchester," Imogen returned, much more irate, evidently, at the reflection on her youth than at the other suggestion. "I am eighteen _past_, and I don't think I am particularly self-willed; at least, I don't mean to be. Mamma and I _generally_ wish the same things. And when you live with a person who can't make up their mind, and you have to decide, that isn't being impulsive."