sn't a snob. But I rather hoped he would have
forgotten. I came as a stranger, brought by a friend of his and mine,
was here only for a meal (we were motoring then, too)--and it's three
years ago."

"But the marquise?"

"She's a bran new one. I fancied I'd heard that the wife died. This one
has the air of a bride, and I should say she's an American."

"Yes. She is. The maid who showed me my room told me. The other girl who
came out of doors, is her sister. They're fearfully rich, it seems, and
that young brute wants to marry her."

"Thank you for the descriptive adjective, my little partizan, but you're
troubling yourself for me more than you need. I don't mind, really.
It's all in a life-time, and I knew when I went in for this business,
that I should have to take the rough with the smooth. I was down on my
luck, and glad to get anything. What I have got is honest, and something
that I know I can do well--something I enjoy, too; and I'm not going to
let a vulgar young snob like that make me ashamed of myself, when I've
nothing to be ashamed of."

"You ought to be proud of yourself, not ashamed!" I cried to him, trying
to keep my eyes cold.

"Heaven knows there's little enough to be proud of. You'd see that, if I
bored you with my history--and perhaps I will some day. But anyhow, I've
nothing which I need to hide."

"As if I didn't know that! But Bertie hates you."

"I don't much blame him for that. In a way, the position in which we
stand to each other is a kind of poetical justice. I don't blame myself,
either, for I always did loathe a cad and Stokes is a cad par
excellence. He visited, more or less on suffrance, at two or three
houses where I used to go a good deal, in my palmy days. How he got
asked, originally, I don't exactly know, for the people weren't a bit
his sort; but money does a lot for a man in these days; and once in, he
wasn't easy to get rid of. He had a crawling way with any one he hoped
to squeeze any advantage out of--"

"I suppose he crawled to you then," I broke in.

"He did try it on, a bit, because I knew people he wanted to know; but
it didn't work. I rather put myself out to be rude to him, for I
resented a fellow like that worming himself into places where he had no
earthly right to be--no right of brains, or heart, or breeding. I must
admit, now I think of it, that he has several scores to wipe off; and
judging from the way he begins, he will wipe hard. Let him!"

"No, no," I