'O Mr. Rollo!' she said (fortified with this last fact) 'you have come for lunch!' 'Have I?' said he, as he took her hand in the old-fashioned way. 'I see I shall not get it.' 'Will getting it to-morrow help you to dispense with it to-day? We are engaged at Mrs. Powder's. You see I _must_ go.' 'I see you must go. I have been delayed.' Mr. Falkirk, according to his accustomed tactics, passed out upon the veranda after giving his own greeting, leaving the others alone. Rollo had come with a face flushed with pleasure and riding; now a certain shade fell upon it; his brow grew grave, as if with sudden thought. 'I will not detain you,' he said, after seeing that Mr. Falkirk was at a safe distance; 'only let me ask one question. Arthur Maryland says he saw you waltzing with that English Crofton. I know it is not true; but tell me so, that I may contradict him. He was mistaken.' 'Dr. Arthur! was _he_ there?' voice and face too shewed a sudden check. 'But he did not see that?' said Rollo, with eyes which seemed as if they would deny the fact by sheer force of will. Her eyes had no more than glanced at him hitherto, shyly withholding themselves. But now they looked full into his face, using the old, wistful, girlish right of search; watching him as keenly as sometimes he watched her. She answered gravely: 'How could Dr. Arthur be mistaken in what he says he saw?' 'Is it _true?_' came with an astonished, fiery glance of the gray eyes. She draw herself up a little, stepping back. 'It is true—since he says so—that he saw me among the rest.' It is not often that we see a man lose colour from intense feeling. Wych Hazel's eyes saw it now. Rollo stood still before her, quite still, for a space of time that neither could measure, growing very pale, while at the same time the lines on lip and brow gradually took a firmer and firmer set. Motionless as an iron statue, and assuming more and more the fixedness of one, he stood, while minute after minute slipped by. To Wych Hazel the time probably seemed measureless and endless; while to Rollo, in the struggle and tumultuous whirl of feeling, it was only a single sharp point of existence. He stood with his eyes cast down; and without raising them, without uttering another syllable, for which I suppose he had not self-control, at last he bowed gravely and low, and turned away. In another minute, the bay horse and his rider went past the door and were gone.