"My love,--my own,--you do care for me a little?" he asks, in tones that tremble with gladness and sorrow, and disbelief. "Of course, foolish boy." With a bright smile that revives him. "That is, at times, when you do not speak to me as though I were the fell destroyer of your peace or the veriest shrew that ever walked the earth. Sometimes, you know,"--with a sigh,--"you are a very uncomfortable Teddy." She slips a fond warm arm around his shoulder and caresses the back of his neck with her soft fingers. Coquette she may be, flirt she is to her finger-tips, but nothing can take away from her lovableness. To Luttrell she is at this moment the most charming thing on which the sun ever shone. "How can you be so unkind to me," he says, "so cold? Don't you know it breaks my heart?" "_I_ cold!" With reproachful wonder. "_I_ unkind! Oh, Teddy! and what are you? Think of all you said to me yesterday and this morning; and now, now you called me a coquette! What could be worse than that? To say it of me, of all people! Ted,"--with much solemnity,--"stare at me,--stare _hard_,--and see do I look the _very least bit_ in the world like a coquette?" He does stare hard, and doing so forgets the question in hand, remembering only that her eyes, her lips, her hair are all the most perfect of their kind. "My beloved," he whispers, caressingly. "It is all your own fault," goes on Circe, strong in argument. "When I provoke you I care nothing for Philip Shadwell, or your Mr. Potts, or any of them: but when you are uncivil to me, what am I to do? I am driven into speaking to some one, although I don't in the least care for general admiration, as you well know." He does not know; common sense forbids him to know; but she is telling her fibs with so much grace of feature and voice that he refuses to see her sin. He tries, therefore, to look as if he agreed with her, and succeeds very fairly. "Then you did not mean anything you said?" he asks, eagerly. "Not a syllable," says Molly. "Though even if I did you will forgive me, won't you? You always do forgive me, don't you?" It would be impossible to describe the amount of pleading, sauciness, coaxing she throws into the "won't you?" and "don't you?" holding up her face, too, and looking at him out of half-shut, laughing, violet eyes. "I suppose so," he says, smiling. "So abject a subject have I become that I can no longer conceal even from myself the fact that you can wind me round your little finger." He tightens his arm about her, and considering, I dare say, she owes him some return for so humble a speech--stoops as though to put his lips to hers. "Not yet," she says, pressing her fingers against his mouth. "I have many things to say to you yet before---- For one, I am not a coquette?" "No." "And you are not going abroad to--forget me? Oh, Teddy!" "If I went to the world's end I could not compass that. No, I shall not go abroad now."