didnt care for me; and she might have known from that that I was not the man to keep her against her will and play dog in the manger with a fellow like Douglas.  However, thats past praying for now.  She has had enough of me; and I have had more than enough of her set and her family, except that I should like to remain good friends with you.  You are the only one of the whole lot worth your salt.  It is understood, of course, that you take Marian’s part against me on all issues; but will you be friends as far as is consistent with that?”

“All right,” said Nelly, shortly.

“Shake hands on it; and I’ll tell you something else that will help you to understand me better,” he said, holding out his hand.  She gave hers; and when the bargain was struck, he turned to the fire and seated himself on the edge of the table.

“You know that when I married,” he resumed, “I was promoted to mix in fashionable society for the first time.  Of course you do:  that was the whole excitement of the affair for the family.  You know the impression I made on polite society better, probably, than I do.  Now tell me:  do you know what impression polite society made on me?”

“Dont understand.”

“Perhaps it has never occurred even to you, sharp as you are, that I could have taken society otherwise than at its own valuation of itself, as something much higher, more cultivated and refined than anything that I had been accustomed to.  Well, I never believed in that much at any time; but it was not until I had made a mesalliance for Marian’s sake that I realized how infinitely beneath me and my class was the one I had married into.”

“Mesalliance!—­with Marian!  I take back the shake hands.”

“Mesalliance with her class, for her sake:  I made the distinction purposely.  Now what am I, Miss McQuinch?  A worker.  I belonged and belong to the class that keeps up the world by its millions of serviceable hands and serviceable brains.  All the pride of caste in me settles on that point.  I admit no loafer as my equal.  The man who is working at the bench is my equal, whether he can do my day’s work or not, provided he is doing the best he can.  But the man who does not work anyhow, and the class that does not work, is a class below mine.  When I annoyed Marian by refusing to wear a tall hat and cuffs, I did so because I wanted to have it seen as I walked through Piccadilly and St. James’s Street that I did not belong there, just as your people walk through a poor street dressed so as to shew that they dont belong there.  To me a man like your uncle, Marian’s father, or like Marmaduke or Douglas, loafing idly round spending money that has been made by the sweat of men like myself, are little better than thieves.  They get on with the queerest makeshifts for self-respect:  old Mr. Lind with family pride.  Douglas with personal vanity, and Marmaduke with a sort of interest in his own appetites and his own jollity.  Everything