"You make two very important reservations."

"I know I do, but I cannot help it. I was never devotedly fond of children, and I was once Enid's governess. I do not think that she ever forgets that fact."

"Well, come to the point," said Hubert, rather impatiently. "What is the matter with her now?"

Florence laughed softly, and eyed him over her fan. She always used a fan, even in the depth of winter--and indeed her boudoir was so luxuriously warm and fragrant that it did not there seem out of place.

She was wearing a loose tea-gown of peacock-blue plush over a satin petticoat of the palest rose-color--a daring combination which she had managed to harmonise extremely well--and the fan which she now held to her mouth was of pale rose-colored feathers. As Hubert looked at her and waited for his answer, he was struck by two things--first by the choiceness and beauty of her surroundings, and secondly by the fatigued expression of her eyes, which were set in hollows of purple shadows, and almost veiled by lids which had the faintly reddened tint which comes of wakefulness at night.

"I shall next ask what is the matter with you," he said. "You really do not look well, Florence!"

"Do I not?" She laid down her fan, took up a hand-glass set in silver from a table at her side, and studied her face in the mirror for a few seconds with some intentness. "You are right," she said, when she put it down; "I am growing hatefully old and haggard and ugly. What can one do?

Would a winter in the South give me back my good looks, do you think?

Perhaps I had better consult a doctor when I go up to town. I am not so old yet that I need lose all my 'beauty,' as people used to call it, am I?"

"Why do you care so much?" Hubert asked. He fancied that there was something deeper in her anxiety than the mere vanity of a pretty woman whose youth was fast fleeting away.

"Why does every woman care? For my husband's sake, of course," she answered, with a slight laugh, but a look of carking care and pain in her haggard eyes. "If I leave off looking pretty and bright, how am I to know that he will care for me any longer? And, if not----"

"If not! You are a mystery to me, Florence; you never professed before to trouble yourself about your husband's love."

"If I am a mystery, you are a perfect baby, my dear boy--I might almost say a perfect fool--in some respects. If he ceases to love me, he--don't you know that he may still leave me penniless? I had no settlements."

Her voice sank almost to a whisper as she said the words.

"Is that it?" said Hubert coldly. "I did not give you credit for so much worldly wisdom, Flossy. If that is your view of the case, I wonder that you do not pay a little more attention to the General's wishes sometimes. I have seen you treat him with very little consideration."

"He is so wearisome! One cannot always be on one's good behavior,"

Flossy murmured; "and, as long as one looks nice and gives him a word or two now and then, just to keep him in good-humor----"

"So long, you think, he will be kind to you? Florence, you do not understand the General's really noble nature. He is incapable of unkindness to any living soul--least of all capable of it to you, whom he loves so dearly. Do try to appreciate him a little more! He is devoted to you, both as his wife and as the mother of his child." He could not tell why she turned her head aside with a sharp gesture of annoyance.

"The child--always the child!" she exclaimed. "I wish I had never had a child at all!"

"We are straying from the point," said her brother coldly; "and we can do no good by discussing your relations with your husband. I want to know--as you say you can tell me--why Enid looks so ill."

Flossy took up her fan and began to examine the tips of the feathers.

"There is only one reason," she said slowly, "why a girl ever looks like that. Only one thing turns a girl of seventeen into a drooping, die-away, lackadaisical creature, such as Enid is just now."

"Speak kindly of her, at any rate," said Hubert. "She is a woman like yourself, and there is only one interpretation to be put upon your words."

"Naturally. You, as a novelist, dramatist, and poet, must know it well enough," said his sister calmly. "Well, remember that you have insisted on my telling you. Enid is in love. That is all. Nothing to make such a fuss about it, is it?"

Hubert was silent for a minute or two. His brow was contracted, as if with vexation or deep thought. Then he said abruptly--

"I suppose it's that good-looking parson in the village. There's no other man whom she seems to know so well. I cannot say that you have taken very great care of her, Florence."

"Are you really blind, or are you pretending?" said Mrs. Vane, looking at him with calm curiosity, "You are not quite such a fool as you make yourself out to be, are you? My dear Hubert, are you not aware that you are a singularly handsome and attractive man, and that you have laid siege to the poor child's heart ever since your first arrival here last autumn?"

Hubert started from his seat as if he had been stung.

"Impossible!" he cried.

"Not at all impossible. She has seen few men in her short life--she has been very carefully guarded, in spite of your sneer at my want of caution--and the attentions of a man like yourself were quite new to her. What could you expect?"

"Attentions!" groaned Hubert. "I never paid her any attentions, save as a cousin and a friend."

"Exactly; but she did not understand."

There was a short silence. He stood with his arm on the mantelpiece, looking through the window at the snow-covered landscape outside. His face had turned pale, and his lips were firmly set. Presently he said, in a low tone--

"You must be mistaken. Surely she can never have let you know what her feelings are on such a point? You say that she does not confide in you.

How can you know?"

"There are other ways of reading a girl's heart as well as a man's coarse way of having everything in black and white," said Flossy composedly. "I am sure of it. She is in love with you, and that is why she looks so ill."

"It must not be! You must let her know--gently, but decidedly--that I am not the man for her--that there is an unsurmountable barrier between us."

"What is it? Are you married already?"

"Florence"--there was a sound of anguish in his voice, "how could I marry a girl whose father I----"

"Hush, hush! For mercy's sake, be quiet! You should never say such things--never think them even. Walls have ears sometimes, and spoken words cannot be recalled. Never say that, even to me. At the same time, I do not see the obstacle."

"Florence! Well, I might expect it from you. You have married Sydney Vane's brother!"

She did not wince. She sat steadily regarding him over the tips of her rose-colored feather fan.

"And you," she said, "will marry Sydney Vane's daughter."

"God keep me from committing such a sin!"

"Hubert, this is mere sentimental folly," said his sister, with some earnestness.

"We have both made up our minds that the past is dead--why do you at every moment rake up its ashes?"

"It is in some ways unfortunate that Enid should have chosen to love you; but, as the matter stands, I cannot see that you have any other choice than to marry her."

"What on earth makes you say so?"

"I thought that you would go through a good deal of unpleasantness for the sake of saving her from trouble. You have said as much."

"I have no right to save her from anything. She must forget me."

"That is sheer nonsense--cowardly nonsense too!" said Mrs. Vane. "If Enid were on the brink of a precipice, would you hesitate to draw her back? I tell you that she is breaking her heart for you, and that, if you are free to marry, and not inordinately selfish, your only way out of the difficulty is to marry her."

"She would get over it."