d be happy. If you want to give
me a reward, I'll take that."

She surveyed him a minute in astonishment. "You're perfectly
extraordinary," she said at last, in a tone of exasperation, "and"--she
threw at him a second later--"and impossible!"

Before he could reply she went grandly up the stairway, so that he was
obliged to follow her. In the hall above she turned on him again. Had he
not known that he had given her no cause for offence he would have said
that her eyes filled with tears.

"Things are very hard as it is," she said, reproachfully. "You needn't
go out of your way to make them gratuitously cruel."

"But, Miss Guion--" he began to protest.

"Please go in," she commanded, throwing open, as she spoke, the door of
her father's room.

XV

Meanwhile, down on the lawn, Drusilla and Ashley were talking things
over from their own points of view. There had been a second of
embarrassment when they were first left alone, which Drusilla got over
by pointing with her parasol to an indistinguishable spot in the stretch
of tree-tops, spires, and gables sloping from the gate, saying:

"That's our house--the one with the little white cupola."

He made no pretense to listen or to look. "She says she doesn't want to
marry me."

He made the statement dispassionately, as though laying down a subject
for academic discussion.

It was some little time before she could think what to say.

"Well, that doesn't surprise me," she risked at last.

"Doesn't surprise you?"

She shook her head. "On the contrary, I should be very much astonished
if she did--now. I should be astonished at any woman in her position
wanting to marry a man in yours."

"I don't care a hang for my position."

"Oh yes, you do. And even if you didn't, it wouldn't matter. It's
naturally a case in which you and she have to see from different angles.
With you it's a point of honor to stand by her; with her it's the same
thing not to let you."

"In honor it's the positive, not the negative, that takes precedence,
and the positive happens to be mine."

"I don't think you can argue that way, you know. What takes precedence
of everything else is--common sense."

"And do you mean to say that common sense requires that she shall give
me up?"

"I shouldn't go so far as to assert that. But I shouldn't mind saying
that if she did give you up there'd be a lot of common sense in her
doing it."

"On whose account? Mine?"

"Yes; and hers. Perh