It is not news to you, I imagine, that Hudson is a great admirer of yours." Christina remained silent; she turned away her eyes with an air, not of confusion, but of deep deliberation.

Surprising frankness had, as a general thing, struck Rowland as the key-note of her character, but she had more than once given him a suggestion of an unfathomable power of calculation, and her silence now had something which it is hardly extravagant to call portentous.

He had of course asked himself how far it was questionable taste to inform an unprotected girl, for the needs of a cause, that another man admired her; the thing, superficially, had an uncomfortable analogy with the shrewdness that uses a cat's paw and lets it risk being singed.

But he decided that even rigid discretion is not bound to take a young lady at more than her own valuation, and Christina presently reassured him as to the limits of her susceptibility.

"Mr.Hudson is in love with me!" she said.
Rowland flinched a trifle.