She stamped her foot. "I've got to do something," she cried. "I must occupy myself somehow. But that isn't the real me, the real Rada Armitage; you are quite mistaken if you think so. I'm as you've seen me, as I appear up in London--hard, cruel, a flirt, everything that's bad. Ask my father; he always calls me a little devil; I've been called a little devil ever since I can remember." "I know others who call you an angel, with an aspirate tacked on," Mostyn laughed. He was rather enjoying himself; it was amusing telling the girl her good qualities and hearing them so violently contradicted. It was Rada's nature to contradict, that was very evident, but it was quite delicious to make her protest that she was all that was bad when the truth was so palpably otherwise. "What is one to believe, what you say yourself or what others say of you? I know what I think," he went on, more than half-conscious that he was goading the girl into a fresh passion. But how could she resent it when he was really praising her? "The real Rada Armitage is kind-hearted and good----" "No she isn't, she's--oh, I don't know what you are making me say! You are perfectly horrid! What's the good of telling a girl she's an angel when she feels quite the reverse? That's just like a man." Rada turned away, angrily biting her lip. "I don't want to hear any more of my virtues, thank you, Mr. Clithero; I'd like you better if you told me I was a beast. And now please excuse me, for I'm going to the stables to see Jack Treves. He doesn't tell me I'm an angel," she added viciously. Mostyn made no reply; and after waiting a moment as though she expected him to speak, Rada turned on her heel and went in search of her mare, which was quietly grazing close at hand. CHAPTER XII. MOSTYN TELLS HIS LOVE. "A misunderstanding! Yes, of course, absolutely a misunderstanding." Captain Armitage waved his arm airily, as he expressed this opinion. "I'm sorry that it should have happened, but Rada quite gave me to believe----" "Yes, of course. I understand you would not have sold Castor to me unless you had concluded that the sale had your daughter's approval." Mostyn spoke quite seriously, though he knew well enough that the old man's excuses were not genuine; but he had no desire to hurl reproaches at the wretched drunkard, who, after all, was Rada's father. Mostyn told himself, with something of that good humour under adverse circumstances which was typical of him, that he ought to have known better at the beginning; that he ought to have judged his man, and that it was his own fault he had been taken in.