e, if, as is
possible, you prefer a young woman to an old one." At this moment
Isabel Boncassen was standing close to them.

"Killancodlem against Crummie-Toddie for ever!" said Miss Boncassen,
waving her handkerchief. As a matter of course a messenger was sent
back to Crummie-Toddie for the young lord's wearing apparel.

The whole of that afternoon he spent playing lawn-tennis with Miss
Boncassen. Lady Mabel was asked to join the party, but she refused,
having promised to take a walk to a distant waterfall where the
Codlem falls into the Archay. A gentleman in knickerbockers was
to have gone with her, and two other young ladies; but when the
time came she was weary, she said,--and she sat almost the entire
afternoon looking at the game from a distance. Silverbridge played
well, but not so well as the pretty American. With them were joined
two others somewhat inferior, so that Silverbridge and Miss Boncassen
were on different sides. They played game after game, and Miss
Boncassen's side always won.

Very little was said between Silverbridge and Miss Boncassen which
did not refer to the game. But Lady Mabel, looking on, told herself
that they were making love to each other before her eyes. And why
shouldn't they? She asked herself that question in perfect good
faith. Why should they not be lovers? Was ever anything prettier than
the girl in her country dress, active as a fawn and as graceful?
Or could anything be more handsome, more attractive to a girl,
more good-humoured, or better bred in his playful emulation than
Silverbridge?

"When youth and pleasure meet, To chase the glowing hours with flying
feet!" she said to herself over and over again.

But why had he sent her the ring? She would certainly give him
back the ring and bid him bestow it at once upon Miss Boncassen.
Inconstant boy! Then she would get up and wander away for a time and
rebuke herself. What right had she even to think of inconstancy?
Could she be so irrational, so unjust, as to be sick for his love, as
to be angry with him because he seemed to prefer another? Was she not
well aware that she herself did not love him;--but that she did love
another man? She had made up her mind to marry him in order that
she might be a duchess, and because she could give herself to him
without any of that horror which would be her fate in submitting to
matrimony with one or another of the young men around her. There
might be disappointment. If he escaped her t