"If you please, Miss, Colonel Hargrave is come in, and wants to know if you will give him a cup of tea."
"Certainly," replied Mabel, in surprise.
"I told him you would," said the cook, handing in a cup and saucer, which she had providently provided, and then departing again.
In a few more seconds, Hargrave himself entered the room.
"What!" said Mabel, "are you so soon tired?"
"Yes," he replied, "and do you not think I have done my duty?—for I danced once with Caroline, and took the trouble of seeing them all provided with partners, two or three deep, before I stole away."
"Here is tea and toast then," said Mabel, trying hard to speak cheerfully; but, to be at ease, was out of the question, with Hargrave seated directly opposite to her, and looking at her, as she felt, only more steadily, because she had not courage to raise her eyes. She played with her spoon, as if it were a curious piece of mechanism, which possessed some secret spring, which careful handling might discover, and then, seeming to fail in this, she traced, in imagination, the flowers on the table-cloth, with so much attention to the subject, that she quite started when he spoke again, and the voice was so like that of years gone by, that it seemed to come from the grave of old recollections.
"Does not this remind you," he said, "of a time, long ago, when we used to have tea in your shady arbour, on the old table I made for you; when that dear child was on my knee, and there was the dish of strawberries, on which you so prided yourself, and the little tea-pot, which Betsy used to keep so bright?"
Mabel turned away her head.