Her father spoke for the first time.  “What is the young man like, Mr. Stocks?  I hear he is very proud and foolish, the sort of over-educated type which the world has no use for.”

“I like him,” said Mr. Stocks dishonestly.  “He fought like a gentleman.”

“These people are so rarely gentlemen,” said Mrs. Andrews, proud of her high attitude.  “I suppose his father made his money in coal and bought the land from some poor dear old aristocrat.  It is so sad to think of it.  And that sort of person is always over-educated, for you see they have not the spirit of the old families and they bury themselves in books.”  Mrs. Andrews’s father had kept a crockery shop, but his daughter had buried the memory.

Mr. Wishart frowned.  The lady had been asked down for her husband’s sake, and he did not approve of this chatter about family.  Mr. Stocks, who was about to explain the Haystoun pedigree, caught his host’s eye and left the dangerous subject untouched.

“You said in your letters that they had been kind to you at this young man’s place.  We must ask him down here to dinner, Alice.  Oh, and that reminds me I found a letter from him to-day asking me to shoot.  I don’t go in for that sort of thing, but you young fellows had better try it.”

Mr. Stocks declined, said he had given it up.  Mr. Thompson said, “Upon my word I should like to,” and privately vowed to forget the invitation.  He distrusted his prowess with a gun.

“By the by, was he not at the picnic when you saved my daughter’s life?  I can never thank you enough, Stocks.  What should I have done without my small girl?”

“Yes, he was there.  In fact he was with Miss Alice at the moment she slipped.”

He may not have meant it, but the imputation was clear, and it stirred one fiery expostulation.  “Oh, but he hadn’t time before Mr. Stocks came after me,” she began, and then feeling it ungracious towards that gentleman to make him share a possibility of heroism with another, she was silent.  More, a lurking fear which had never grown large enough for a suspicion, began to catch at her heart.  Was it possible that Lewis had held back?

For a moment the candle-lit room vanished from her eyes.  She saw the warm ledge of rock with the rowan berries above.  She saw his flushed, eager face—­it was her last memory before she had fallen.  Surely never—­never was there cowardice in those eyes!

Mrs. Andrews’s vulgarities and her husband’s vain repetitions began to pall upon the anxious girl.  The young Mr. Thompson talked shrewdly enough on things of business, and Mr. Stocks abated something of his pomposity and was honestly amiable.  These were her own people, the workers for whom she had craved.  And yet—­were they so desirable?  Her father’s grave, keen face pleased her always, but what of the others?  The radiant gentlewomen whom she had met with the Manorwaters seemed to belong to another world than this of petty social struggling and awkward ostentation.  And the men!  Doubtless they were foolish, dilettanti, barbarians of sport, half-hearted and unpractical!  And she shut her heart to any voice which would defend them.