She smiled in spite of herself. “Would the Queen let you hold it?” she asked, gently releasing her hand, and looking at him as she drew it away. The peace was made without another word of explanation. Amelius took a chair at her side. “I’m quite happy now you have forgiven me,” he said. “You don’t know how I admire you--and how anxious I am to please you, if I only knew how!” He drew his chair a little nearer; his eyes told her plainly that his language would soon become warmer still, if she gave him the smallest encouragement. This was one reason for changing the subject. But there was another reason, more cogent still. Her first painful sense of having treated him unjustly had ceased to make itself keenly felt; the lower emotions had their opportunity of asserting themselves. Curiosity, irresistible curiosity, took possession of her mind, and urged her to penetrate the mystery of the interview between Amelius and her aunt. “Will you think me very indiscreet,” she began slyly, “if I made a little confession to you?” Amelius was only too eager to hear the confession: it would pave the way for something of the same sort on his part. “I understand my aunt making the heat in the concert-room a pretence for taking you away with her,” Regina proceeded; “but what astonishes me is that she should have admitted you to her confidence after so short an acquaintance. You are still--what shall I say?--you are still a new friend of ours.” “How long will it be before I become an old friend?” Amelius asked. “I mean,” he added, with artful emphasis, “an old friend of _yours?”_ Confused by the question, Regina passed it over without notice. “I am Mrs. Farnaby’s adopted daughter,” she resumed. “I have been with her since I was a little girl--and yet she has never told me any of her secrets. Pray don’t suppose that I am tempting you to break faith with my aunt! I am quite incapable of such conduct as that.” Amelius saw his way to a thoroughly commonplace compliment which possessed the charm of complete novelty so far as his experience was concerned. He would actually have told her that she was incapable of doing anything which was not perfectly becoming to a charming person, if she had only given him time! She was too eager in the pursuit of her own object to give him time. “I _should_ like to know,” she went on, “whether my aunt has been influenced in any way by a dream that she had about you.” Amelius started. “Has she told you of her dream?” he asked, with some appearance of alarm. Regina blushed and hesitated, “My room is next to my aunt’s,” she explained. “We keep the door between us open. I am often in and out when she is disturbed in her sleep. She was talking in her sleep, and I heard your name--nothing more. Perhaps I ought not to have mentioned it? Perhaps I ought not to expect you to answer me?”