"If you won't have me, Ethel, you'll drive me to desperation. I might go off and marry one of the Grey Sisters in revenge. It should be Sister Ann. She is a charming picture; one to take a young man's heart by storm."
Mary Ursula looked keenly at him. In all this there was a semblance of something not real. It struck her that he was wanting to make it appear he wished for Ethel, when in fact he did not.
"Harry," she cried, speaking upon impulse, "you have not, I hope, been falling in love with anybody undesirable?"
"But I have," said Harry, his face flushing. "Don't I tell you who it is?--Sister Ann. Mark you though, cousin mine, you shall never be allowed to make one of those Grey Sisters."
"You are very random, you know, Harry," said Miss Castlemaine, slowly. "You talk to young ladies without meaning anything--but they may not detect that. Take care you do not go too far some day, and find yourself in a mesh." Harry Castlemaine turned his bright face on his cousin. "I never talk seriously but to one person, Mary Ursula. And that's Ethel."
"Harry," cried the young girl, with flashing eyes, "you are not fair to me."
"And now, have you any commands for the Commodore?" went on Harry lightly, and taking no notice of Ethel's rebuke. "I am going to the Hutt."
They said they had none; and he left the room. Mary turned to Ethel.
"My dear--if you have no objection to confide in me--is there anything between you and Harry?"
"Nothing, Mary," was the answer, and Ethel blushed the soft blush of girlish modesty as she said it. "Last year he teased me very much, making me often angry; but latterly he has been better. The idea of my marrying him!--when we have grown up together like brother and sister! It would seem hardly proper. I like Harry very much indeed as a brother; but as to marrying him, why, I'd rather never be married at all. Here's the carriage coming back! Mamma must have forgotten something."