“Thank you, Randal, I prefer a more elevated position,” replies she austerely.

“Ah, you would! you would!” says Randal, who really ought to be ashamed of himself.  “You were meant for high places.”

He sighs loudly, and goes back on his rug.

“Miss Gower is right,” says Mrs. Bethune gaily, who has just arrived.  “Why don’t you go in for Miss Bolton?”

“She wouldn’t have me!” says Gower tragically.  “I’ve hinted all sorts of lovely things to her during the past week, but she has been apparently blind to the brilliant prospects opened to her.  It has been my unhappy lot to learn that she prefers lollipops to lovers.”

“You tried her?” asks Mrs. Chichester.

“Well, I believe I did do a good deal in the chocolate-cream business,” says Mr. Gower mildly.

“And she preferred the creams?”

“Oh! much, much!" says Gower.

“So artless of her,” says Mrs. Bethune, with a shrug.  “I do love the nineteenth-century child!”

“If you mean Miss Bolton, so do I,” says a young man who has been listening to them, and laughing here and there—­a man from the Cavalry Barracks at Ashbridge.  “She’s quite out-of-the-way charming.”

Mrs. Bethune looks at him—­he is only a boy and easily to be subdued, and she is glad of the opportunity of giving some little play to the jealous anger that is raging within her.

“She has a hundred thousand charming ways,” says she, smiling, but very unpleasantly.  “An heiress is always charming.”

“Oh no!  I didn’t look at it in that way at all,” says the boy, reddening furiously.  “One wouldn’t, you know—­when looking at her."

“Wouldn’t one?” says Mrs. Bethune.  She is smiling at him always; but it is a fixed smile now, and even more bitter.  “And yet one might,” says she.

She speaks almost without knowing it.  She is thinking of Rylton—­might he?

“I think not,” says the boy, stammering.

It is his first lesson in the book that tells one that to praise a woman to a woman is to bring one to confusion.  It is the worst manners possible.

“I agree with you, Woodleigh,” says Gower, who is case-hardened and doesn’t care about his manners, and who rather dislikes Mrs. Bethune.  “She’s got lovely little ways.  Have you noticed them?”

He looks direct at Marian.

“No,” says she, shaking her head, but very sweetly.  “But, then, I’m so dull.”

“Well, she has,” says Gower, in quite a universally conversational tone, looking round him.  He turns himself on his rug, pulls a cushion towards him, and lies down again.  “And they’re all her own, too.”

“What a comfort!” says Mrs. Bethune, rather nastily.

Gower looks at her.

“Yes, you’re right,” says he.  “To be original—­honestly original—­is the thing nowadays.  Have you noticed when she laughs?  Those little slender shoulders of hers actually shake.”