Rivers saw that his chance was over, with a sigh, yet not perhaps with all the vehement disappointment of a youth. He had made a beginning, and perhaps he was not yet ready to go any further, though his feelings might have hurried him on too hastily, injudiciously, had no interruption occurred. But he had half frightened without displeasing her, which, as he was an experienced man, was a condition of things he did not think undesirable. There is a kind of fright which, to be plunged into yet escape from, to understand without being forced to come to any conclusion, suits the high, fantastical character of a young maiden’s awakening feelings. And then before he, who was of a race so different, could actually venture to ask a Miss Trevanion of Highcourt to marry him, a great many calculations and arrangements were necessary. He thought John Trevanion, who was a man of the world, looked at him with a certain surprise and disapproval, asking himself, perhaps, what such a man could have to offer, what settlements he could make, what establishment he could keep up. “Are not you cold in this corner,” John said, “so far from the fire, Rosalind?--and you are a chilly creature. Run away and get yourself warm.” He took her chair as she rose, and sat down with an evident intention of continuing the conversation. As a matter of fact, John Trevanion was not asking himself what settlements a newspaper correspondent could make. He was thinking of other things. He gave a nod of his head towards the portrait, and said in a low tone, “She has been talking to you of _her_.” Rivers was half disappointed, half relieved. It proved to him, he thought, that he was too insignificant a pretender to arouse any alarm in Rosalind’s relations, which was a galling thought. At the same time it was better that he should have made up his mind more completely what he was to say, before he exposed himself to any questioning on the subject. So he answered with a simple “Yes.” “We cannot make up our minds to think any harm of her,” said Trevanion, leaning his head on his hand. “The circumstances are very strange, too strange for me to attempt to explain. And what you said seemed damaging enough. But I want you to know that I share somehow that instinctive confidence of Rosalind’s. I believe there must be some explanation, even of the--companion--” Rivers could not but smile a little, but he kept the smile carefully to himself. He was not so much interested in the woman he did not know as he was in the young creature who, he hoped, might yet make a revolution in his life. CHAPTER XXXIV.