"But I must have help," says Olga. "Some one must help me. You?—is it not?"
"I?" with strong emphasis. "What should I have to do with it?"
"Not much, yet I count upon you. Why, who do you think I am going to make him jealous about? Eh?"
"How should I know?"
"How shouldn't you? Why it is of you,—you!" with quite a delicious little laugh. "So you will have to dance round after me all day for the future until your mission is fulfilled, and try to look as if you really loved me."
"You have mistaken your man," says Ronayne, quietly: "you must get some one else to help you in this matter. It is not for me, even if I did not love you; I should scorn so low a task."
"Love is an idle word," she says, her eyes flashing.
"It may be—to some. But I tell you no man's heart is of so poor value that it can be flung hither and thither at any one's pleasure,—no, not even at the pleasure of the woman he adores. You will seek some more complaisant lover to be your dupe on this occasion. I decline the office."
"You forget how you speak, sir!" she says, proudly; yet even as she gives way to this angry speech a gleam of deepest admiration so lights her eyes that she is obliged to let her lids fall over them to cover the tell-tales beneath; her breath comes and goes quickly.
Something like relief comes to her when Lord Rossmoyne, stretching his long neck round the curtain that half shields the cushioned recess of the window where they are sitting, says, with considerable animation, for him,—