He caught his breath at this.  “Pevensey!” he stammered; “the Earl of Pevensey!—­the man you are going to marry!”

“Dear me, no!” Miss Stapylton answered, with utmost unconcern; “I would sooner marry a toad.  Why, didn’t you know, Olaf?  I thought, of course, you knew you had been introducing athletics and better manners among the peerage!  That sounds like a bill in the House of Commons, doesn’t it?” Then Miss Stapylton laughed again, and appeared to be in a state of agreeable, though somewhat nervous, elation.  “I wrote to him two days ago,” she afterward explained, “breaking off the engagement.  So he came down at once and was very nasty about it.”

“You—­you have broken your engagement,” he echoed, dully; and continued, with a certain deficiency of finesse, “But I thought you wanted to be a countess?”

“Oh, you boor, you vulgarian!” the girl cried, “Oh, you do put things so crudely, Olaf!  You are hopeless.”

She shook an admonitory forefinger in his direction, and pouted in the most dangerous fashion.

“But he always seemed so nice,” she reflected, with puckered brows, “until to-day, you know.  I thought he would be eminently suitable.  I liked him tremendously until—­” and here, a wonderful, tender change came into her face, a wistful quaver woke in her voice—­“until I found there was some one else I liked better.”

“Ah!” said Rudolph Musgrave.

So, that was it—­yes, that was it!  Her head was bowed now—­her glorious, proud little head,—­and she sat silent, an abashed heap of fluffy frills and ruffles, a tiny bundle of vaporous ruchings and filmy tucks and suchlike vanities, in the green dusk of the summer-house.

But he knew.  He had seen her face grave and tender in the twilight, and he knew.

She loved some man—­some lucky devil!  Ah, yes, that was it!  And he knew the love he had unwittingly spied upon to be august; the shamed exultance of her face and her illumined eyes, the crimson banners her cheeks had flaunted,—­these were to Colonel Musgrave as a piece of sacred pageantry; and before it his misery was awed, his envy went posting to extinction.

Thus the stupid man reflected, and made himself very unhappy over it.

Then, after a little, the girl threw back her head and drew a deep breath, and flashed a tremulous smile at him.

“Ah, yes,” said she; “there are better things in life than coronets, aren’t there, Olaf?”

You should have seen how he caught up the word!

“Life!” he cried, with a bitter thrill of speech; “ah, what do I know of life?  I am only a recluse, a dreamer, a visionary!  You must learn of life from the men who have lived, Patricia.  I haven’t ever lived.  I have always chosen the coward’s part.  I have chosen to shut myself off from the world, to posture in a village all my days, and to consider its trifles as of supreme importance.  I have affected to scorn that brave world yonder where a man is proven.  And, all the while, I was afraid of it, I think.  I was afraid of you before you came.”