"Nothing, my darling."
"Are you still jealous?"
"No. I will cure myself of it."
"Well, you see, it is your own fault; if you had not always sung the praises of Bertie as your best friend I should never have become so intimate with him."
Yes, it was his own fault; that he saw very clearly.
"And are you satisfied with me now?" she asked, laughing.
He, too, laughed. For indeed it was true; for Frank's sake she had now suddenly changed her behaviour to Bertie; she would rise and quit the sofa where they sat while he was yet speaking; she sometimes contradicted him, reproached him for his foppishness, and laughed at him for his dainty little hands. He looked at her in amazement, fancied she meant it for flirtation, but could not understand what she would be at. One evening, for hour after hour, she pestered him with petty annoyances, pin-pricks, which she intended should reassure Frank and not wound Bertie too deeply. The conversation presently turned on heraldry, and Sir Archibald wanted to show the two men the blazoned roll of his family tree. Frank rose, ready to follow him to his study, and Bertie did the same. Eva felt a little compunction, thinking she had carried her teasing rather far this time, and she knew that her father's pedigree would not interest him in the least.
"Leave Bertie here, papa," said she. "He knows nothing about heraldry."
And, at the same time, to comfort Frank, who dared not betray his jealousy, she added lightly, with a mollifying twinkle of her long eye-lashes:
"Frank will trust us alone together, I daresay!"