It was about this time that Lewis first came to the house to play to Miss Jean; but of this Lilias was not supposed to know anything. She had seen him to be a stranger when they had first met on the road, and she had perceived, with a mixture of amusement and pique that whereas he looked with a good deal of curiosity at her sister, her own blue veil had been a sort of sanctuary for herself. Lilias could not but think he must be a stupid young man not to have divined. It tickled her to think that he had passed her quite over and gazed at Margaret and Jean. But he did not interest her much. Nothing could be more unlike the fine specimen of manhood over six feet high, with dark eyes that went to your very soul, who was in the habit most evenings of saving Lilias' life, than this commonplace young man who never looked at her. Lewis was not tall; there was not much colour about him. He did not seem at all like a person who could stop a runaway horse, or burst through a flaming door, or leap a wall to render instant and efficient help as that hero had now done so often that Lilias felt a little variety would be desirable. When she met him again at the new castle, she was still more amused by his startled look at her, and by the way in which he permitted Miss Margaret to swoop upon him and carry him off. There was something amiable, something _nice_ about him, she thought. He was like a brother. Sometimes in novels the heroine will have a brother who is completely under her control, who takes his opinions and views from her, and is useful at last in marrying her confidant, as well as in backing herself up generally, whatever she may have to do. It seemed to Lilias that he would do very well for that _rôle_. She was seized with sudden kindness for him after that second encounter. And then it amused her much that Margaret thought it necessary to carry off this mild, colourless, smiling youth out of her way. From the moment this happened she made up her mind to make his acquaintance, and it was not in such utter innocence as Jean supposed that Lilias made that sudden appearance in the drawing-room, cutting short a proposal upon the very lips of Lewis, and interrupting the high tension of the situation. The dinner that followed, the startled look which he had cast upon herself, his silence and bewildered absorption when he sat opposite to her, and the discomfiture of Margaret, had all been exceedingly amusing to the young plotter. She meant no harm, neither to Lewis nor to her sisters. She neither meant to make a conquest of the stranger, nor to alarm her anxious guardians. She wanted a little fun. She was a girl full of imagination, full of poetical attributes: but by times an imperious desire for a little fun will overwhelm the sagest bosom of eighteen. She could not resist the impulse. To see the agitation she had caused was delightful. She could scarcely contain her laugh as she sat down opposite to him and saw his