“I have always observed,” Rosamond was saying, with the air of a sage, “that the more you take an interest in anything, the more amused you are. Everything is tiresome when you don’t take an interest. My father is an instance. He is never out of his chair: he can’t do anything without Rogers, not even raise himself up. You would think he had a dreadful life: but he has not: he watches the people, and knows everything that happens. I am a little like that myself. Now Eddy has no such interest in anything. He likes horses and billiards and that sort of thing, and bad company generally.” Rosamond gave a glance behind at Eddy’s acquaintance, who was making a perfectly good luncheon, and keeping up a furtive observation of everybody round him. “I don’t like,” she said, “the looks of that man. Do you think he belongs to any college? I don’t.” “He is not like the college men I have seen,” Archie ventured to say. “No, of course he is not: he is more like a scout out on a holiday.--As you are so kind as to pay some attention to what I say, Mr. Rowland, please remember that Eddy is not at all to be relied upon. He would think it was quite a good joke to bring in a man like that. Don’t let him, whatever you do, have an invitation to the ball.” “If your brother asks for it--” said Archie. “Never mind my brother: you will do a great deal better if you trust me,” said Rosamond. There was a little pause, and then a murmur from Archie, which Evelyn could not hear; but she drew her own conclusions. It was: “And am I not doing that with all my heart!” “Oh!” Rosamond said, elevating her eyebrows slightly, casting for almost the first time a glance down upon him. It seemed to give her some surprise, not unmingled with apprehension, and she drew a little further off from the heather, and caught a branch of the gale, as if disturbed for once in her composure. The scent of it, as the girl crushed it in her hand, rose to Mrs. Rowland and remained in her consciousness ever after as something associated with anxiety and care. Meanwhile Marion and Eddy were chatting so continuously, sometimes in confidential whispers, sometimes with outbursts of sound and laughter, that no one could be any the wiser as to what they said. “He is no more a don than I am,” Eddy was confessing; “it was the first thing I could think of to give him a countenance. There never was a more villainous one than he has by nature. No, I won’t tell you what he is: he’s mixed up with all sorts of people. What a lark to have him asked to the ball! Do you think she would do it? To introduce him everywhere as Johnson of Chad’s, and see how he would behave! I shall not let you dance with him though, or any nice girl I know.” “Oh, I would dance with him if he asked me,” said Marion. “If you think that I would be guided by you!”