'I have not said so, you tiresome Shafto!' said she, looking upward at him with one of her sweetest and most bewitching smiles.
'Then I have some hope, dear Finella?'
'I have not said that either.'
'You may yet love me, then?'
'No; not as you wish it.'
'But why?'
'You have no right to ask me.'
His fair beetling eyebrows knit, and a gleam came into his cold, grey eyes as he asked, after a pause:
'Is there anyone else you prefer?'
'You have no right to inquire,' replied she, and a keener observer might have detected that his question brought a tiny blush to her cheek and a fond smile to her curved lips; 'so please to let this matter drop, once and for ever, dear Shafto, and we can be such delightful friends—such jolly cousins.'