“Shall I send you word about what happens in the Tyrol?” he said, still with the humble air of one receiving instructions.

“Yes.”

“And if she rejects me, what shall I do?”

“She will not reject you.”

“Shall I come to you for consolation, and ask you what you meant by driving me on such a blunder?”

“If she rejects you,” Sheila said with a smile, “it will be your own fault, and you will deserve it.  For you are a little too harsh with her, and you have too much authority, and I am surprised that she will be so amiable under it.  Because, you know, a woman expects to be treated with much gentleness and deference before she has said she will marry.  She likes to be entreated, and coaxed, and made much of, but instead of that you are very overbearing with Mrs. Lorraine.”

“I did not mean to be, Sheila,” he said, honestly enough.  “If anything of the kind happened it must have been in a joke.”

“Oh no, not a joke,” Sheila said; “and I have noticed it before—­the very first evening you came to their house.  And perhaps you did not know of it yourself; and then Mrs. Lorraine, she is clever enough to see that you did not mean to be disrespectful.  But she will expect you to alter that a great deal if you ask her to marry you; that is, until you are married.”

“Have I ever been overbearing to you, Sheila?” he asked.

“To me?  Oh no.  You have always been very gentle to me; but I know how that is.  When you first knew me I was almost a child, and you treated me like a child; and ever since then it has always been the same.  But to others—­yes, you are too unceremonious; and Mrs. Lorraine will expect you to be much more mild and amiable, and you must let her have opinions of her own.”

“Sheila, you give me to understand that I am a bear,” he said in tones of injured protest.

Sheila laughed:  “Have I told you the truth at last?  It was no matter so long as you had ordinary acquaintances to deal with.  But now, if you wish to marry that pretty lady, you must be much more gentle if you are discussing anything with her; and if she says anything that is not very wise, you must not say bluntly that it is foolish, but you must smooth it away, and put her right gently, and then she will be grateful to you.  But if you say to her, ‘Oh, that is nonsense!’ as you might say to a man, you will hurt her very much.  The man would not care—­he would think you were stupid to have a different opinion from him; but a woman fears she is not as clever as the man she is talking to, and likes his good opinion; and if he says something careless like that, she is sensitive to it, and it wounds her.  To-night you contradicted Mrs. Lorraine about the h in those Italian words, and I am quite sure you were wrong.  She knows Italian much better than you do, and yet she yielded to you very prettily.”

“Go on, Sheila, go on,” he said with a resigned air.  “What else did I do?”