The elder, whose face bore a blush distinct from the reflected glow of the embers, fell to guessing, as commanded, a little wildly:
"You begin to find the beau cousin Rupert a little more interesting than you anticipated."
"Bah," cried Molly, with a stamp of her sandalled foot, "it is not possible to guess worse! He is more insufferable to me, hour by hour."
"I think him kind and pleasant," returned Madeleine simply.
"Ah, because he makes sweet eyes at you, I suppose—yet no—I express myself badly—he could not make anything sweet out of those hard, hard eyes of his, but he is very—what they call here in England—attentive to you. And he looks at you and ponders you over when you little think it—you poor innocent—lost in your dream of ... Smith! There, I will not tease you. Guess again."
"You are pleased to remain here because you are a true weather-cock—because you like one thing one day another the next—because the country peace and quiet is soothing to you after the folly and noise of the great world of Bath and Dublin, and reminds you refreshingly, as it does me, of our happy convent days." The glimmer of a dainty malice lurked in the apparent candour of Madeleine's grave blue eyes, and from thence spread into her pretty smile at the sight of Molly's disdainful lip, "Well then, I give it up. You have some mischief on foot, of that at least I am sure."
"No mischief—a work of righteousness rather. Sister Madeleine, you heard all that that gallant gentleman you think so highly of—your cousin Rupert, my dear" (it was a little way of Molly's to throw the responsibility of anything she did not like, even to an obnoxious relationship, upon another person's shoulders), "narrated of his brother Sir Adrian, and how he persuaded Tanty that he was, as you said just now, a hopeless madman—"
"But yes—he does mad things," said the elder twin, a little wonderingly.
"Well, Madeleine, it is a vile lie. I am convinced of it."
"But, my darling——"