"Indeed, my sweet Miss Churchill, I cannot be sufficiently grateful. Between ourselves, the country is rather triste, and you have given me positively a sensation; yet my forte is not the Arcadian: however, I will do my petit possible to console you for the loss of le beau Lindor, who was my predecessor."
"Sir," said Ethel, "I do not understand you."
"Very probably not!—charming ignorance!" replied Mr. Trevanion, with a patronising expression. "A few weeks in Paris will soon give you a little knowledge of the world; but the effect of your first simplicity will be delicious. Ah, there is Mrs. Churchill! let us join her. I suppose, as I have been, playing the part of confident, I must not make her laugh over our little romance."
Ethel was silent from surprise: she had prepared herself for anger—even sorrow; but ridicule left her without an answer. What could she say to a hearer, who only smiled, and to whom emotion was only a scene in a pastoral? That night she made an appeal to
