CHAPTER VI.

A MONTH had passed, and the three ladies still remained at Ferrers Court, though other visitors had come and gone, lots of them. Lacy was still there also, and occupied in making desperate love to the Russian lady, utterly ignoring two important facts—one that she only laughed at him, the other that she was three years his senior.

But while all this was going on, Bootles had fallen in love at last, as men and women only fall once in their lives, and of course the lady was Madame Gourbolska’s friend, Miss Grace—had he but known it, the mother of Mignon.

But Bootles never suspected that for a moment. True, there was a likeness so strong as to proclaim the truth, and many a time Miss Grace wondered, when she caught sight of the child’s face and her own in a glass, that all these people did not see it. Yet neither Bootles nor any one else did see it, and the game of love was played on with desperate earnestness on his side, and with equally desperate desire to prevent it on hers.

But Bootles admired shy game, and Miss Grace’s evident shyness made him only the more earnest; and not being troubled with that faint heart which never won fair lady, he had no intention of allowing Madame Gourbolska to depart from beneath his roof without asking Miss Grace to return to it as its mistress. Therefore one afternoon, when he returned from hunting in much bespattered pink, and went into the fire-lit library, where he found Miss Grace half dreaming by the fire, he shut the door with the intention of getting it over at once. Miss Grace rose with some signs of confusion.

“Don’t go for a minute,” said Bootles; “I want to speak to you. It seems to me that you have grown very fond of my little Mignon. Is it not so?”

Miss Grace caught at the carvings of the oaken chimney-shelf to steady herself, and her heart began to beat hard and fast.

“Yes, I am very fond of her,” she stammered.

“I wish you would take her for your own,” Bootles said, very gently.

“For—my own?” sharply. “What do you mean?”

For a moment she thought he knew all, but his next words undeceived her.

“If she had such a mother as you, poor little motherless waif, and if _I_ had such a wife, and if Ferrers Court had such a mistress! Oh! don’t you understand what I mean?” taking her hand.

Miss Grace snatched the hand away. “Oh, don’t, _don’t_, DON’T!” she said, turning away.

But Bootles possessed himself of it again. “Must I tell you more? Oh, my darling, how from the very first day I ever saw you I loved you with all my heart and soul? How, when I bade you welcome to my house, I could, and would if I had dared, have taken you up to my heart and kissed you before every one? How—”

“Oh, tell me nothing—nothing!” she cried, with feverish haste. “Don’t you understand it cannot be? It is impossible—quite impossible.”

“Impossible!” he echoed, blankly. “Why is it impossible? Not because you don’t care, that I’ll swear.”

She said nothing.

“Or, if that is so, look at me and say I don’t love you.”

But Miss Grace did not speak, nor yet did she look.

“Or will you tell me that there is some one else whom you like better?” he asked, regaining hope.

No, Miss Grace did not seem inclined to vouchsafe that information either.

“Or that the care of the child would be an objection?”

“_No_!” she burst out, in an agonized tone.

“Then what do you mean by impossible?” he asked. “It seems to me very possible indeed.”

She looked at him—that proud, handsome, erect man, with a smile of expectant happiness on his good face—and tried to take her hands away.

“Oh!” she sobbed out, “don’t you think I would if I could? I have not been so happy that I would throw away such happiness as you could give me. Some day you may know what it costs me to tell you that it is quite impossible.”

“You give me no hope?” he asked, in a dull voice, and she saw that he had grown white to his very lips.

“None,” she returned; then added, bitterly, “Oh, hope and I have had nothing to say to one another this long, long while.”

Bootles dropped her hand listlessly. “Then it is no use my boring you,” he said, turning away.

[Picture: Then with one imploring backward look she went away and left him alone]

A fierce denial rose to the girl’s lips, but she choked it down and suffered his words in silence. Then meekly, and with one imploring backward look at his tall figure as he stood, his head well up in spite of his defeat, looking into the fire, she went away and left him alone.