ou, in all civilised society!"

Was she pelting him in this way that she might so get rid of some of her
own inner smart and restlessness? If so, the unlucky Frank could not
guess it. He could only feel himself intolerably ill-used. He had meant
to pour himself out to her on the subject of Betty and his woes, and
here she was rating him as to his _duties_, of which he had hardly as
yet troubled himself to think, being entirely taken up either with his
grievances or his enjoyments.

"I'm sure you know you're talking nonsense," he said sulkily, though he
shrank from meeting her fiery look. "And if I _am_ idle, there are
plenty of people idler than me--people who live on their money, with no
land to bother about, and nothing to do for it at all."

"On the contrary, it is they who have an excuse. They have no natural
opening, perhaps--no plain call. You have both, and, as I said before,
you have no _right_ to take holidays before you have earned them. You
have got to learn your business first, and then do it. Give your eight
hours' day like other people! Who are you that you should have all the
cake of the world, and other people the crusts?"

Frank walked to the window, and stood staring out, with his back turned
to her. Her words stung and tingled; and he was too miserable to fight.

"I shouldn't care whether it were cake or crusts," he said at last, in a
low voice, turning round to her, "if only Betty would have me."

"Do you think she is any the more likely to have you," said Marcella,
unrelenting, "if you behave as a loafer and a runaway? Don't you suppose
that Betty has good reasons for hesitating when she sees the difference
between you--and--and other people?"

Frank looked at her sombrely--a queer mixture of expressions on the
face, in which the maturer man was already to be discerned at war with
the powerful young animal.

"I suppose you mean Lord Maxwell?"

There was a pause.

"You may take what I said," she said at last, looking into the fire, "as
meaning anybody who pays honestly with work and brains for what society
has given him--as far as he can pay, at any rate."

"Now look here," said Frank, coming dolefully to sit down beside her;
"don't slate me any more. I'm a bad lot, I know--well, an idle lot--I
don't think I am a _bad_ lot--But it's no good your preaching to me
while Betty's sticking pins into me like this. Now just let me tell you
how she's been behaving."

Marcella succumbed, and hear