"I'm not up to logic to-day, dear Miss Villiers," said Tregurtha, with quiet despondency; "I have brought you a problem harder to solve than any in that class-book of yours. Do throw it over the hedge for half an hour, for indeed it is not opportune!"
Rosetta's astonishment was instructive to see. She clasped the book tighter and said, breathlessly: "You are strange, Mr. Tregurtha. Sit down here, and please don't look at me like the reproachful manes of my grandfather! There, at any rate, it is only a despairing profile that I see—the full face was unendurable."
"Just allow me," said Tregurtha, and he put Stanley Jevons into his pocket. "There! now I have no rival save the landscape. I say, listen, Miss Villiers. I—oh! but you will never understand—you will not understand!"
"I will do my best," said Rosetta, with a childish touch of pride. "Am I so stupid?"
"My little Rosetta, no!" cried Tregurtha, with an excess of tenderness which overwhelmed him; "but this is something which mere cleverness will never teach you, and which I cannot explain to you. Roscoria could have done it," he sighed, "but I am an inferior creature; besides, I shall only be speaking out my own disappointment. Well, best have it over; after all it won't take long. Rosetta, how do you think of me?"
"As my friend," answered Rosetta, promptly.
"Ah! and all the time I am only your lover!"
"My lover!"
"Say what you like now, I am ready," groaned Tregurtha, with hopeless resolution.
There was a long, dreary pause. Rosetta sat still, gazing away over the sunny lawn, and Tregurtha cared not even to see her answer in her face—he knew it; he looked before him also, and listlessly their thoughts dwelt on the daisies, the butterflies playing above them, the shifts of light and shadow, and the birds' half dreamlike song.