"Am I intruding?" he said; "you look nearly as startled as if I were the famous White Weeper herself." His tone was bantering, but underneath Hertha perceived a touch of nervousness. "I fancied you were absorbed in your game," she said. "No, I did not fancy you were the White Weeper, though I confess I have been thinking about her. But she never comes inside the house?" "She has never done so up to now," said Lennox, "but Heaven knows what desperate steps she may not be driven to take if things go on as they are doing at present." His tone was so peculiar that Miss Norreys glanced at him questioningly. "I hope devoutly she will wait till I have gone, then," she said, half laughingly. "I have no wish at all to make her acquaintance. Are you joking, Mr Maryon, or are you at all, just a little, in earnest?" "Yes and no," he replied. "I am half joking out of the excess of my earnestness. Miss Norreys, I have something to tell you--a confession to make. Do you know, sometimes I have fancied you guessed, that I am very seriously, very thoroughly, in love, for the first time in my life?" "With?" asked Hertha. "My cousin Louise," he said, quietly, though his sunburnt face deepened a little in colour. Hertha nodded her head. "Yes," she said, "I thought so. And--what about Winifred, Mr Maryon?" "I know the difference now," he replied. "That was a case of thinking I was what every one wished me to be. Now--oh, _what_ a difference!" "You should be very grateful to Winifred," said Hertha, drily. "I am," he said, naively, "_most_ grateful. But,"--and here his honest eyes grew troubled--"it is far from plain sailing. As things are, Louise won't hear of it, and she is a girl of her word. It all depends upon Winifred. Miss Norreys, she is infatuated." A full explanation followed. Lennox was clear-headed and entirely candid, and before the conversation was at an end, Hertha saw and understood things more thoroughly than even after her talk with Mrs Maryon. "I will do what I can," she said, "but I feel less confident than I did, somehow. I almost think I could brave a visit from the ghostly guardian of the family, if I thought her influence would carry the day." "Hush, my dear Miss Norreys," said Lennox. "I admire your devotion, but I tremble. _Supposing_ she--it--took you at your word." And again Hertha felt uncertain if he were joking or in earnest. But before she could say more, Celia appeared in the doorway. "You lazy people!" she said, "everybody's asking for you. We are going to have a dance in the hall before we go to bed." CHAPTER TEN. DREAMS AND NO DREAMS. Miss Norreys's mind, though a remarkably well-balanced one, was yet far from phlegmatic or unimpressionable. So far, indeed, from such did she know her inner self to be, that she had learned by experience to beware of her own natural impulsiveness, to have profound belief in "second thoughts."