Those were wonderful days for him.  To be an intimate of that splendid household, to drive behind spanking bays with Miss Latimer by his side, to take tea at the Waldorf with her and other semi-divine beings—­what a dazzling experience for the ex-clerk, whose lines so recently had lain in such different places.  Innately a gentleman, he bore himself with dignity in this new position, with a fine simplicity and self-effacement that was not lost on some of his friends.  His respect for them all was unbounded.  For the mother, so majestic, so awe-inspiring; for Howard, that handsome boy whose exuberant Americanism was untouched by any feeling of caste; for Melton and Hubert Henry, his brothers, those lordly striplings of a lordly race; for Miss Latimer, who in his heart of hearts he dared not call Christine, and who to him was the embodiment of everything adorable in women.  Yes, he loved her; confessed to himself that he loved her; humbly and without hope, with no anticipation of anything more between them, overcome indeed that his presumption should go thus far.

He did not attempt to hide his feelings for her, and though too shy for any expression of it, and withheld besides by the utter impossibility of such a suit, he betrayed himself to her in a thousand artless ways.  He asked for no higher happiness than to sit by her side, looking into her face and listening to her mellow voice.  He was thrice happy were he privileged to touch her hand in passing a teacup.  Her gentleness and courtesy, her evident consideration, the little peeps she gave him into a nature gracious and refined beyond anything he had ever known, all transported him with unreasoning delight.  She, on her part, so accustomed to play a minor role herself in her sister’s household, was yet too much a woman not to like an admirer of her own.  She took more pains with her dress, looked at herself more often in the glass than she had done in years.  It was laughable; it was absurd; and she joined as readily as anyone in the mirth that Raymond’s devotion excited in the family, but, deep down within her, she was pleased.  At the least it showed she had not grown too old to make men love her; it was the vindication of the mounting years; the time, then, had not yet come when she had ceased altogether to count.  She had lost her nephews, who were growing to be men; the love she put by so readily when it was in her reach seemed now more precious as she beheld her faded and diminished beauty, the crow’s-feet about her eyes, her hair turning from brown to grey.  A smothered voice within her said:  “Why not?”

She analysed Raymond narrowly in the long tete-a-tetes they had together.  She drew him out, encouraging and pressing him to tell her everything about himself.  She was always apprehending a jarring note, the inevitable sign of the man’s coarser clay, of his commoner upbringing, the clash of his caste on hers.  But she was struck instead by his inherent refinement, by his unformulated instincts of well-doing and honour.  He was hazy about the use of oyster-forks, had never seen a finger-bowl, committed to her eyes a dozen little solecisms which he hastened to correct by frankly asking her assistance; but in the true essentials she never had to feel any shame for him.  Clumsy, grotesquely ignorant of the social amenities, he was yet a gentleman.