"I should like to know what you call Kate's conduct with that little Scotchman." "Friendship, my dear," Grace answered, repressing a smile.
"Remember, they have known each other for years." "Friendship! Yes; it would be heartless coquetry if it were I.I hope Lieutenant Reginald Stanford, of Stanford Royals, will like it when he comes.

Sir Ronald Keith is over head and ears in love with her, and she knows it, and is drawing him on.

A more cold-blooded flirtation no one ever saw!" "Nonsense, Rose! It is only a friendly intimacy." But Rose, unable to stand this, bounced out of the room in a passion, and sought consolation in her pet novels.
Kate and Sir Ronald were certainly very much together; but, notwithstanding their intimacy, she found time to devote two or three hours every day to Mr.Richards.

Rose's mystery was her mystery still.
She could get no further towards its solution.

Mr.Richards might have been a thousand miles away, for all any of the household saw of him; and Grace, in the solitude of her own chamber, wondered over it a good deal of late.
She sat at her window one December night, puzzling herself about it.
Kate had not come down to dinner that day--she had dined with the invalid in his rooms.