"and I should like to ask you one question
before I go —may I?"

"I suppose my permission or refusal would
not count for much if you have made up your
mind," said Hope, she too looking down,
folding the leaves of her book a little unconsciously.

"I think it would, Miss Hope.  I think I
have always been careful to obey your every
wish, so far as I could; and I have never
wilfully displeased you, believe me."

"It is a pity, then, that you should have done
it so often without your will," said Hope.

"That is just what I want to ask," replied
Grantley."  Why have you been so constantly
displeased with me, Miss Hope?  No one has
tried more earnestly than I to please and obey
you —I can truly say from the very first years
of my life here —why is it, then, that you hate
me as you do?  What have I ever done to make
you hate me?  If I only knew! if I only had
known for all these years!"

"Hate you?" she cried quickly, turning full
round upon him and raising her eyes with a
strange look into his face. Then she dropped
them again, and said coldly, "I did not know,
Mr. Watts, that I had ever honoured you
enough to hate you.  I have scarcely taken so
much notice of you as to warrant you in saying
that."

Grantley turned pale. "Forgive me," she
said, sadly; "this has been again one of my
unlucky blunders."

"I think," she said, with a gentler look than
usual, "we might as well drop this conversation.
I do not see to what good it can possibly lead;
and giving offence and then making apologies
has always seemed to me a very childish way of
passing the time; and we are not children now,"
she continued, with girlish pride.  "It has not
been your fault, Grantley, if you have been
tiresome and disagreeable."  But as she looked up
when she said this, and smiled all radiantly and
sweetly, the words had no sting in them, and were
indeed more coaxing than impertinent.  "I dare
say you have not meant to be unpleasant, and so
I have forgiven you.  But you had better go now
and look after the partridges.  I promise you,
if you get one, to take it specially to myself;
and I am sure that will be honour enough!"
And she laughed one of her sweet, clear, precious
laughs, as rare as precious, which most people —
and Grantley among them —prized as much as
they would have prized the loving favour of a
queen.

"Ah, Miss Hope!" he said very tenderly, his
handsome face, bronzed and flushed, looking
down upon her with such infinite love and
admiration, "you have too much power over
your fellow-creatures.  It is good neither for
you nor for them."

"It is very good for both them and me," she
said.  "It keeps them in their proper places,
and makes me able to ——"  She hesitated.

"To what?" said Grantley, coming a step
nearer.

"To keep mine," she answered coldly,
drawing herself away.

He sighed, and seemed to wake as from a
dream.  "Well, I must go," he then said.
"Good-by, Miss Hope; I will get you a bird
if I can; and remember that you have promised
to accept it specially for yourself."

"You need not give yourself the trouble,"
she answered disdainfully; she, too, seeming
to shake herself clear from a pleasant dream.
"I have not the slightest wish that you should
get me one, Mr. Watts, or indeed that you
should think of me at all."   Saying which she
walked away, and left him without another
word.

He looked after her as she slowly disappeared,
and then he struck off into the fields for one of
the last days of partridge shooting he was to have
in the old country.  But Hope, going deeper
into the shrubbery, flung herself down on the
moss at the roots of the trees and burst into a
passionate flood of tears, hating and despising
herself the while.

When Grantley returned in the evening he
had only one bird in his bag; though game was
plentiful this year and he was acknowledged to
be a first-rate shot.  His cousin, John
Rashleigh, rallied him unmercifully, and Hope said
in her most disdainful way: "I thought the
coveys would be tolerably safe, Mr. Watts!"
But he only laughed, and admitted that he
was a muff and not worth his salt —that powder
and shot were thrown away upon him —and that
he would make but a sorry figure in India
where men could shoot —with other jeerings
playful or bitter as they might be; simply
saying, "Well, Miss Hope, you must have it
some morning for breakfast when I am gone;
it is the last I shall shoot, and I should like
you to have it."

To which answered Hope indifferently: "You
are very good, Grantley, but I dare say Fido will
be the only one to benefit by your last bag; I do
not suppose I shall even see the creature."

Grantley coloured; and Mr. Rashleigh
himself thought she might have been more gracious
just on the eve of the poor lad's departure, when
perhaps they might never see him again; and after
all, though he was a poor relation, and had very
properly never forgotten that, or gone beyond
the strictest line of demarcation, yet he had
been many years in the house now, and Hope
was very young when he came, so that if she
had even considered him almost as a brother, no
great harm would have been done; and so on;
his heart unconsciously pleading against his
child's untoward pride in favour of his
dependent.

Perhaps it was some such half discomfort —
it could not be said to be conscious displeasure
—that made him refuse Hope's request that
evening.  As usual, she was out of funds;
and she had a special need for money at this
moment.  She wished to help poor Anne Rogers
down in the fever, with her husband in the
hospital, and her children destitute, and she
knew that her father would not give them a
penny; for the man had been convicted of
poaching,  and Anne herself did not bear the most