Lady Vera blushes, but holds her peace. Of course, somebody will tell him her story soon--tell him that her mother was American, and that she herself had spent seventeen years in his own native land. At least he shall not hear it from her. She has a vague notion that it would please him to know it, that the blue eyes whose sparkle she has already learned to know, would light with pleasure at the knowledge. Those eyes, how bright and keen they are. They seem to read one's thoughts. Lady Vera finds her gaze drooping from them as they never drooped before mortal man's before. Why? she asks herself. "It is because he is so bold," she decides, vexedly. "He seems to be trying to read one's inmost thoughts. I will show him that I am not afraid of him." Thereupon she lifts the dark eyes bravely to give him a cool society stare, but in an instant they waver and fall before the glance they have surprised in his. Just so the blue eyes had turned on her last night, when he sang: "On the banks of Allan Water, When the sweet spring tide did fall, Was the miller's lovely daughter, Fairest of them all! For his bride a soldier sought her, And a winning tongue had he, On the banks of Allan Water None so gay as she." "Why do you stare at me _so_?" she breaks out, angry with herself, and with him. He flushes, startled by her _brusquerie_. "I beg your pardon--I did not mean to be rude," he answers, quietly. "But, Lady Vera, a man must be blind not to look at _you_." "Why?" she asks, still sharply. "Because I think God made all beautiful things for the pleasure of men's eyes," he answers, firmly, yet respectfully. "Impertinent!" Vera says to herself, indignantly, and looks another way. "Do you lay an embargo on my eye-sight as far as you are concerned, Lady Vera?" he continues, after a moment. "Yes," she replies, with her head still turned away. "Then I shall try to obey you," he answers, calmly. "I will not even see you when I can help it, but you must forgive me for saying that if I should never see you again I shall never forget a single line of your face." "I hope he is not making love to me," Lady Vera says to herself, uneasily, then laughing at herself. "Of course not; I dare say he has a sweetheart in his own land, some dear, sweet, angelic creature, like Ivy Cleveland, perhaps." They speak no more, and when they have gone once around the square, Captain Lockhart leaves the earl's daughter at the door with a low bow. She goes into the house, her cheeks tingling with an odd kind of shame. "I was rude, _perhaps_," she thinks, a little uneasily. "What must he think of English manners? But then why did he look at me so? I felt so--so strangely." To Lady Clive, who is trifling over a bit of fancy work, she says, presently: "Why did you not tell me you expected your brother?"