This was embarrassing, but she must answer.

“Why, you—­we—­move in—­quite different—­spheres, and—­ah, it’s really not to be thought of Mr. Keith,” she said, half desperately.

He himself had thought of the different spheres in which they moved, but he had surmounted that difficulty.  Though her father, as he had learned, had begun life as a store-boy, and her mother was not the most learned person in the world, Alice Yorke was a lady to her finger-tips, and in her own fine person was the incontestable proof of a strain of gentle blood somewhere.  Those delicate features, fine hands, trim ankles, and silken hair told their own story.

So he came near saying, “That does not make any difference”; but he restrained himself.  He said instead, “I do not know that I understand you.”

It was very annoying to have to be so plain, but it was, Mrs. Yorke felt, quite necessary.

“Why, I mean that my daughter has always moved in the—­the most—­exclusive society; she has had the best advantages, and has a right to expect the best that can be given her.”

“Do you mean that you think my family is not good enough for your daughter?”

There was a tone in his quiet voice that made her glance up at him, and a look on his face that made her answer quickly: 

“Oh, no; not that, of course.  I have no doubt your family is—­indeed, I have heard it is—­ur—.  But my daughter has every right to expect the best that life can give.  She has a right to expect—­an—­establishment.”

“You mean money?” Keith asked, a little hoarsely.

“Why, not in the way in which you put it; but what money stands for—­comforts, luxuries, position.  Now, don’t go and distress yourself about this.  You are nothing but a silly boy.  You fancy yourself in love with my daughter because she is the only pretty girl about here.”

“She is not; but she is the prettiest I know,” ejaculated Keith, bitterly.

“You think that, and so you fancy you are in love with her.”

“It is no fancy; I am,” asserted Keith, doggedly.  “I would be in love with her if she were as ugly as—­as she is beautiful.”

“Oh, no, you wouldn’t,” declared Mrs. Yorke, coolly.  “Now, the thing for you to do is to forget all about her, as she will in a short time forget all about you.”

“I know she will, though I hope she will not,” groaned the young man.  “I shall never forget her—­never.”

His voice and manner showed such unfeigned anguish that the lady could not but feel real commiseration for him, especially as he appeared to be accepting her view of the case.  She glanced at him almost kindly.

“Is there nothing I can do for you?  I should like very much to do something—­something to show my appreciation of what you have done for us to make our stay here less dreary than it would have been.”

“Thank you.  There is nothing,” said Keith.  “I am going to turn my attention now to—­getting an establishment.”  He spoke half sarcastically, but Mrs. Yorke did not see it.