"In love with me! I'm sure I hope not," says Tita with a disgusted air. "Don't put yourself out about that. I should hate you if you were in love with me. Fancy a person following me about always, and saying silly things to me, and perhaps wanting to kiss me! You," anxiously looking at him with searching eyes, "you wouldn't want to kiss me, would you?" She looks so pretty as she puts this startling question, that Rylton loses himself a little. "I don't know." "Then you had _better_ know, and at _once,"_ says Miss Bolton, with decision. The whole affair seems to be trembling in the balance. A sense of amusement has most unfortunately seized on Rylton, and is shaking him to his very heart's core. To marry a girl who even objected to a kiss! It sounds like a French play. He subdues his untimely mirth by an effort, and says gravely, "How can I promise you that I shall never want to kiss you? I may grow very fond of you in time, and you--but, of course, that is far more improbable--may grow fond of me." "Even so," begins she hotly. She pauses, however, as if some thought had struck her. "Well, let it stay so," says she. "If ever I do grow to like you as much as you fancy, why, then you may kiss me--sometimes." "That's a bargain," says he. Again he suppresses a desire to laugh. It seems to him that she is intensely interesting in some way. "In the meantime," says he, with quite a polite air, "may I not kiss you now?" "No!" says she. It is the lightest monosyllable, but fraught with much energy. She tilts the shoulder nearest to him, and peeps at him over it, with a half-merry little air. She sets Rylton's mind at work. Is she only a silly charming child, or an embryo flirt of the first water? Whatever she is, at all events, she is very new, very fresh--an innovation! He continues to look at her. "Really no?" questions he. She nods her head. "And yet you have said 'Yes' to everything else?" She nods her head again. She nods it even twice. "Yes, I shall marry you," says she. "I may tell my mother?" Miss Bolton sits up. A little troubled expression grows within her eyes. "Oh! must you?" cried she. "She _will_ be mad. She won't let you marry me--I know she won't. She--hates me." "My dear child, why?" Rylton's tone is shocked. The very truth in her declaration makes it the more shocking. And how does she know? His mother has been sweetness itself to her _before_ the curtain. "Never mind, I know," says Tita. "I feel things. They come to me. I don't blame her. I'm sure I'm often horrid. I know that, when I look at other people. When I look at----" She pauses. "Look at whom?" "At your cousin." "My cousin!" "Yes! You love her, don't you?" "Love her!" He has turned suddenly as pale as death. "What do you mean?" asks he in a low voice. "I love her, any way," says Tita. "I think Miss Knollys is the nicest person in all the world."