The girl shook her head reproachfully.  “I know what you mean, and perhaps you are right, for that was what Toinette insinuated,” she said.  “She actually told me that I should be thankful I had a brain since I had no heart.  Still, at first I let myself go, and it was delightful—­the opera, the dances, and the covered skating-rink with the music and the black ice flashing beneath the lights.  The whir of the toboggans down the great slide was finer still, and the torchlight meets of the snowshoe clubs on the mountain.  Yes, I think I was really young while it lasted.”

“For a month,” said the elder.  “And after?”

“Then,” said the girl slowly, “it all seemed to grow a trifle purposeless, and there was something that spoiled it.  Toinette was quite angry and I know her mother wrote you—­but it was not my fault, aunt.  How was I, a guileless girl from the prairie, to guess that such a man would fling the handkerchief to me?”

The evenness of tone and entire absence of embarrassment was significant.  It also pointed to the fact that there was a closer confidence between Maud Barrington and her aunt than often exists between mother and daughter, and the elder lady stroked the lustrous head that rested against her knee with a little affectionate pride.

“My dear, you know you are beautiful, and you have the cachet that all the Courthornes wear.  Still, you could not like him?  Tell me about him.”

Maud Barrington curled herself up further.  “I think I could have liked him, but that was all,” she said.  “He was nice to look at and did all the little things gracefully; but he had never done anything else, never would, and, I fancy, had never wanted to.  Now a man of that kind would very soon pall on me, and I should have lost my temper trying to waken him to his responsibilities.”

“And what kind of man would please you?”

Maud Barrington’s eyes twinkled, but the fact that she answered at all was a proof of the sympathy between herself and the questioner.  “I do not know that I am anxious any of them should,” she said.  “But since you ask, he would have to be a man first:  a toiling, striving animal who could hold his own amidst his fellows wherever he was placed.  Secondly, one would naturally prefer a gentleman, though I do not like the word, and one would fancy the combination a trifle rare, because brains and birth do not necessarily tally, and the man educated by the struggle for existence is apt to be taught more than he ever would be at Oxford or in the army.  Still, men of that stamp forget a good deal, and learn so much that is undesirable, you see.  In fact, I only know one man who would have suited me, and he is debarred by age and affinity—­but, because we are so much alike, I can’t help fancying that you once knew another.”

The smile on Miss Barrington’s face, which was still almost beautiful as well as patient, became a trifle wistful.