"I have no wish to disparage the taste of the Cornish gentlemen——"
"None could afford to treat their taste with more indifference than you and Miss Trecarrel, who are both——"
"Both what?" asked Mabel, quickly.
"Above all comparison."
"Oh, we did not leave all our gallantry in the old coal-mine!"
"Excuse me, Rose," said Trevelyan, "it was originally a tin-mine."
"Pity it was not brass—eh, Audley?" replied Rose, laughing with a voice like a silver bell.
"Come, come, Rose," said Mabel, "you and Trevelyan are usually such good friends that I shall not have you to spar thus."
"We don't spar, it is only 'barrack-room chaff,' in which, as you may perceive, Mr. Trevelyan excels," retorted the piqued belle.
The truth was rather apparent to Audley, that the pretty—nay, the beautiful and hazel-eyed Rose was nettled, and seriously so. Hitherto she had considered the handsome ex-Lieutenant of Hussars, and now of the Cornish Light Infantry, as her own peculiar property—even more than her sister. He was to be her papa's Aide-de-camp in India—she had settled this, nem. con.; and while on leave at home, he was to be her dangler, secret slave, and open adorer—husband in the end perhaps, if nothing better "turned up;" for Audley's expectations from his father, the barrister, as one of a family of five, were slender enough; and here he was too probably smitten with a little chit-faced interloper whom no one knew anything about!