Gwen turned aside impatiently, saying in a lower voice, 'How foolish you are, Lewis! One would have thought you would have tired of it by this time.'
'On the contrary,' he replied in his ordinary tone: 'the bloom is perennial. I wither beneath the ice of Miss Tweedie's snubs, and revive beneath the sun of her smiles like--like a bachelor's button.'
And Rose did smile. Her contempt always seemed to pass by the man himself, and rest on his opinions. Even there, much as she loathed them, she was forced to confess that they did not seem to affect his actions; that it was impossible to conceive of his behaving to any woman, save as a gentleman should behave. Yet this thought aggravated the offence of his manner by enhancing its malice aforethought, and made her frown again.
'Come! there is light enough for a single yet, Mr. Keene,' she said imperiously, and George, with one regretful glance at Mrs. Boynton, obeyed. Lewis Gordon looked after them, shrugged his shoulders, and strolled off to the messroom-tent.
'It really is shameful of Lewis to tease Miss Tweedie as he does,' began Gwen, who, finding herself unavoidably paired with Dan, instantly started what she thought a safe topic of conversation. He looked at her with absent eyes.
'A shame, is it? but when a man likes a girl he is very apt----'
She broke in with a petulant laugh. 'Are you asleep, Dan? What could induce you to think that?'
'What? Why, love of course! Set a thief to catch a thief. A man can't be in love himself without----'
He certainly was not asleep! but she managed to double back to safer ground. Yet his words recurred to her that evening during the half hour tête-à-tête which she accorded with the utmost regularity to Colonel Tweedie in his capacity of host; Rose meanwhile singing songs to the younger men who gathered round the piano, leaving those two decorously to the sofa.
'There is a little song I want Mrs. Boynton to hear,' called the Colonel during a pause. 'I forget its name--you haven't sung it for a long time, and I used to be so fond of it. A little Jacobite song--really a charming air, Mrs. Boynton.' Rose flushed visibly--at least to the feminine eyes in the party--and shook her head.