"I dare say," said Fairlie, dryly, "it's for a bet he's made, to see how many women he can hoax, I believe."
"How can you tell it is a hoax?" said Geraldine, throwing cowslips at her greyhound. "It may be some medium of intercourse with some one he really cares for, and who may understand his meaning."
"Perhaps you are in his confidence, Geraldine, or perhaps you are thinking of answering it yourself?"
"Perhaps," said the young lady, waywardly, making the cowslips into a ball, "there might be worse investments. Your bête noire is strikingly handsome; he is the perfection of style; he is going to be Equerry to the Prince; his mother is just married again to Lord Chevenix; he did not name half his attractions in that line in the Daily."
With which Geraldine rushed across the meadow after the greyhound and the cowslip ball, and Fairlie lay quiet plucking up the heaths by the roots. He lay there still, when the cowslip ball struck him a soft fragrant blow against his lips, and knocked the Cuba from between his teeth.
"Why don't you speak?" asked Geraldine, plaintively. "You are not half so pleasant to play with as you were before you went to India and I was seven or eight, and you had La Grace, and battledoor and shuttlecock, and cricket, and all sorts of games with me in the old garden at Charlton."
He might have told her she was much less dangerous then than now; he was not disposed to flatter her, however. So he answered her quietly,
"I preferred you as you were then."
"Indeed!" said Geraldine, with a hot color in her cheeks "I do not think there are many who would indorse your complimentary opinion."
"Possibly," said Fairlie, coldly.