"This is an unexpected pleasure," murmured the young lady, with sufficient formality to prevent her words from being dangerously insincere.
"Unexpected to you and a pleasure to me?" queried the gentleman, with a keen glance at the pair, whose tete-a-tete he had evidently disturbed, "or do your words bear reference to the idea of seeing me going past your door?"
The amount of truth in these very good guesses startled the girl to whom they were addressed into an uncomfortable sense of guilt. "How can you accuse me of anything so horrid?" she said, drawing her chair not far from him, and looking into his face with the appreciative air and attitude that are not to be resisted.
"Mr. Galton," said Herbert, who, having completed the game, and vanquished his sister, could afford to turn his attention to the frivolous conversation of his elders, "do you know what Rose said when she saw you coming? She said, 'Oh, dear, I am so glad!'"
"Herbert," implored Rose, crimsoning under these carefully reported words, and fearing that Mr. Galton, not being aware of the motive which prompted them, would not know whether to be ecstatic or sarcastic, "you are a terrible boy!"
"Herbert has done me a great kindness," exclaimed the flattered gentleman, who considered Rose's embarrassment quite natural, and very pleasing under the circumstances. "All my doubts of a welcome he has happily removed."
In the fear that these doubts might unhappily return if he were allowed to continue conversation with a too-confiding younger brother, Rose devoted herself with nervous intentness to his entertainment, and succeeded brilliantly. Fragments of laughter and chat drifted across to where Eva was trying to persuade Allan into playing checkers.
"Just one game, please, Mr. Dunlop," pleaded the little damsel, in resistless accents.
"If you but knew what a wretched player I am," said the young man gloomily.
"Oh, are you a wretched player?" she exclaimed brightly, "I am so glad. Then there is some chance for me." She added confidentially, "I am even more wretched."