'Sometimes, Miss Hazel, when the thing happens to be particularly difficult of belief.'
'Unalterable?' Hazel repeated, half to herself,'few things are that. Suppose your supposition were a mistake, Mr. Falkirk,what then?'
'Can you tell me that it is?' he said, looking across the table to her with a gaze that would find the truth.
'Would you be glad?' she answered. 'And will you tell me why?'
Then Dingee came in with coffee, and a bouquet; and Hazel sat playing idly with the flowers while Dingee set out the cups, the scent of heliotrope and geranium filling the room. While Dingee was near, Mr. Falkirk was silent; but eyeing the girl however, the flowers, her action, with a glance that took it all in and lost no item; not a graceful movement nor a tint of the picture.
'Yes,' he said firmly when the boy was gone, 'I should be glad. You are just fit for the play you are playing now; it is not played out, and should not be, for some time to come. You are young, and ought to be free; and you are rich, Miss Hazel, and ought not to marry somebody who will ruin you.'
For a minute Hazel spoke not for surprise, and then she let a prudent pause lap on to that. For she had no mind just then to get up a tirade for Mr. Rollo's benefit, and all the same she felt her blood stirring.
'Is this all I am fit for?' she said: but the laugh was a little nervous.
'I said nothing you need take umbrage at,' her guardian returned somewhat bitterly. 'I spoke only in care for you, Miss Hazel; not in depreciation. I am about the last man in the world to do that.'
'It is nothing very new for you to speak in depreciation of me, sir,' said his ward, in her old privileged manner. 'You know you never did think I was good for much.'