“They are undoubtedly perfectly moral people,” he told his aunt Cynthia afterwards, “but I wonder that they keep such an immoral plate.”  However, that was before he fell in love with Ellen, while he was struggling with himself in his desire to do so, and making all manner of sport of himself by way of hindrance.

Ellen at that age could have had no possible conception of the sentiment with which the young man viewed her environment.  She was sensitive to spiritual discords which might arise from meeting with another widely different nature, but when it came to material things, she was at a loss.  Then, too, she was pugnaciously loyal to the glories of the best parlor.  She was innocently glad that she had such a nice room into which to usher him.  She felt that the marble-top table, the plush lambrequin on the mantle-shelf, the gilded vases, the brass clock, the Nottingham lace curtains, the olive-and-crimson furniture, the pictures in cheap gilt frames, the heavily gilded wall-paper, and the throws of thin silk over the picture corners must prove to him the standing of her family.  She felt an ignoble satisfaction in it, for a certain measure of commonness clung to the girl like a cobweb.  She was as yet too young to bloom free of her environment, her head was not yet over the barrier of her daily lot; her heart never would be, and that was her glory.  Young Lloyd handed her the roll of valedictory as soon as he entered.

“I am very much obliged to you for allowing me to read it,” he said.

Ellen took it, blushing.  Her heart sank a little.  She thought to herself that he probably did not like it.  She looked at him proudly and timidly, like a child half holding, half withdrawing its hand for a sweet.  It suddenly came to her that she would rather this young man would praise her valedictory than any one else, that if he had been present when she read it in the hall, and she had seen him standing applauding, she could not have contained her triumph and pride.  She was not yet in love with him, but she began to feel that in his approbation lay the best coin of her realm.

“It is very well written, Miss Brewster,” said Robert, and she flushed with delight.

“Thank you,” she said.

But the young man was looking at her as if he had something besides praise in mind, and she gazed at him, shrinking a little as before a blow whose motion she felt in the air.  However, he laughed pleasantly when he spoke.

“Do you really believe that?” he asked.

“What?” she inquired, vaguely.

“Oh, all that you say in your essay.  Do you really believe that all the property in the world ought to be divided, that kings and peasants ought to share and share alike?”

She looked at him with round eyes.  “Why, of course I do!” she said. 
“Don’t you?”

Robert laughed.  He had no mind to enter into an argument with this beautiful girl, nor even to express himself forcibly on the opposite side.