"I've only known in the last few weeks how
rotten one can really be, but at least I have known--I do know--and
that's just what you don't. We've been friends for some time, you and
I--but if you don't look out, we shan't be friends much longer."

"Why?" he asked quietly.

"You were never very much good," she went on, paying no attention to
his question, "and always conceited, but that was your aunt's fault as
much as any one's, and she gave you that idea of your family--that you
were God's own chosen people and that no one could come within speaking
distance of you--you had that when you were quite a little boy, and you
seem to have thought that that was enough, that you need never do
anything all your life just because you were a Trojan. Eton helped the
idea, and when you went up to Cambridge you were a snob of the first
order. I thought Cambridge would knock it out of you, but it didn't;
it encouraged you, and you were always with people who thought as you
did, and you fancied that your own little corner of the earth--your own
little potato-patch--was better than every one else's gardens; I
thought you were a pretty poor thing when you came back from Cambridge
last year, but now you've beaten my expectations by a good deal----"

"I say----" he broke in--"really I----" but she went on unheeding--

"Instead of working and doing something like any decent man would, you
loafed along with your friends learning to tie your tie and choosing
your waistcoat-buttons; you go and make love to a decent girl and then
when you've tired of her tell her so, and seem surprised at her hitting
back.

"Then at last when there is a chance of your seeing what a man is
like--that he isn't only a man who dresses decently like a tailor's
model--when your father comes back and asks you to spend a few of your
idle hours with him, you laugh at him, his manners, his habits, his
friends, his way of thinking; you insult him and cut him dead--your
father, one of the finest men in the world. Why, you aren't fit to
brush his clothes!--but that isn't the worst! Now--when you find
you're in a hole and you want some one to help you out of it and you
don't know where to turn, you suddenly think of your father. He wasn't
any good before--he was rough and stupid, almost vulgar, but now that
he can help you, you'll turn and play the dutiful son!

"That's you as you are, Robin Trojan--you asked me for it and you've
got it; it's just as well that y