By this time Miss Slarge was taking a breather on her hobby horse, and might be expected to gallop that tiresome animal for a considerable time; so, leaving Mallow to endure the martyrdom, Lord Aldean edged away from the pair by degrees. The cunning rascal had caught a glimpse of Miss Ostergaard out of the tail of his eye, and, preferring flirtation to instruction, managed to place himself by her side whilst she was filling a small basket with roses. All this apparently without her knowledge.
The young lady from New Zealand was one of the most charming of young ladies; and Aldean went so far as to make no reservation in favour of any one. She had been sent to England to be educated, and, having gone to the same school as Olive, a close friendship had sprung up between them as rapidly as had grown Jonah's gourd. Happily the friendship was more enduring than the plant, and for three or four years these two had been like Helena and Hermia, two cherries on one stem. Miss Ostergaard, whose Christian, or rather Maori name, was Tui, loved Olive as her other self, and frequently came to stay at the Manor House. She was now twenty years of age, and so pretty that she won every heart left uncaptured by Olive. With dark hair, dark complexion, and two wonderful dark eyes like wells of liquid light, she made such havoc amongst young and susceptible males that she should have been shut up as a too delightful damsel dangerous to the youth of the community. Her last victim was the hapless Aldean. Having impaled him on a pin, she was watching him wriggle. Not that Jim objected to the process--indeed, he rather liked it--for if he wriggled on the pin no one else could, for the time being; and thus he secured all the sweet torment unto himself: a most gratifying monopoly.
Of course Tui knew that Olive was in love with Mallow, and equally, of course, Olive was aware of Aldean's passion for Tui; and of course both of them discussed their lovers to their hearts' content. Tui was distinctly in favour of Mallow as a suitor for her darling Olive, and was enraged at the mere thought of her friend being handed over, with fifty thousand pounds, to an unknown suitor from the back of beyond. Therefore she was glad to see him, and she hoped that he would rescue Olive from the Indian dragon as a true knight should; for Olive was very wretched and very tearful, and had been so ever since the departure of Mr. Dimbal.
"Poor dear!" sighed Miss Ostergaard, thinking of her friend.
"That is me, isn't it?" asked the artful Aldean.
"You?" said the lady, snipping vigorously--"as if I was thinking of you, Lord Aldean. Oh, you men, you men!--and they say that women are vain!"
"You have something to be vain about," said Aldean, seeing his way to a compliment.
"I have, indeed--with you. No, I was thinking of Olive. You know that she is going to be married?"
Aldean cast a commiserating look at his friend, who was still being assailed with Babylonic information by Miss Slarge, and nodded.
"But she may not marry the chap after all, you know?"