It annoyed her to observe that her step-mother glanced deprecatingly at her, and was inclined to be extra affectionate. This would never do. Like most young girls, she was generally rather silent when not interested in the discussions of her elders. But now she never let conversation drop. The incidents of the croquet-party furnished a safe topic. Colonel Rolleston thought the gentle dissipation had made his daughter quite lively. Afterwards she took refuge at the piano, which was imprudent, for music only too surely touches the chord of feeling, and every piece was associated with Bertie. Cecil shut the instrument, and effected a strategical retreat to her bed-room, where, in the luxury of solitude, she might worry and torment herself to her heart's content. His absence was trial enough, but the sting lay in the way it was done, which was such a proof of indifference, that shame urged her to crush out all thoughts of him, and suffer anything rather than let him see the impression his careless affection had made on her.
And so Cecil passed through her first "baptism of fire" alone and unsuspected; but time had softened much of her resentment ere they met again.
The time I've lost in wooing, In watching and pursuing The light that lies In woman's eyes, Has been my heart's undoing. --Moore.
"Bluebell," said little Lola, bursting into the nursery, where Freddy, rather a tyrant in his affections, had insisted on her singing him to sleep, "Ma says you have got to dine down to-night, and Miss Prosody,
too. Won't she be in a way, for her white muslin never came home from the wash, and she had begun altering the _barège_; so I asked Felda to tell her," said Lola, diplomatically. "Do you know Bertie has come?" (His nieces never prefaced his name with the formality of uncle.) "Oh of course, you must have seen him at the Rink. Do you like him? He is sure to like you, at first, at any rate," said Lola, who apparently, like other lookers-on saw most of the game. "And don't tell, but I believe he hates Miss Prosody."
"Well, one day he was whispering to Cecil, with their heads very near together. Miss Prosody was looking for a book in a recess behind the door, close to them; but they never saw her till she moved away, and I heard Bertie mutter something about an 'inquisitive old devil.' But don't tell, mind. There's the bell; I must go to tea," _Exit_ Lola, and Bluebell flew off with some alacrity to her bed-room to prepare.