CHAPTER I

HERO VERSUS GENTLEMAN

Miss Fanny Glen's especial detestation was an assumption of authority
on the part of the other sex. If there was a being on earth to whom she
would not submit, it was to a masterful man; such a man as, if
appearances were a criterion, Rhett Sempland at that moment assumed to
be.

The contrast between the two was amusing, or would have been had not
the atmosphere been so surcharged with passionate feeling, for Rhett
Sempland was six feet high if he was an inch, while Fanny Glen by a
Procrustean extension of herself could just manage to cover the
five-foot mark; yet such was the spirit permeating the smaller figure
that there seemed to be no great disparity, from the standpoint of
combatants, between them after all.

Rhett Sempland was deeply in love with Miss Fanny Glen. His full
consciousness of that fact shaded his attempted mastery by ever so
little.

He was sure of the state of his affections and by that knowledge the
weaker, for Fanny Glen was not at all sure that she was in love with
Rhett Sempland. That is to say, she had not yet realized it; perhaps
better, she had not yet admitted the existence of a reciprocal passion
in her own breast to that she had long since learned had sprung up in
his. By just that lack of admission she was stronger than he for the
moment.

When she discovered the undoubted fact that she did love Rhett Sempland
her views on the mastery of man would probably alter--at least for a
time! Love, in its freshness, would make her a willing slave; for how
long, events only could determine. For some women a lifetime, for
others but an hour, can elapse before the chains turn from adornments
to shackles.

The anger that Miss Fanny Glen felt at this particular moment gave her
a temporary reassurance as to some questions which had agitated
her--how much she cared, after all, for Lieutenant Rhett Sempland, and
did she like him better than Major Harry Lacy? Both questions were
instantly decided in the negative--for the time being. She hated Rhett
Sempland; _per contra_, at that moment, she loved Harry Lacy. For
Harry Lacy was he about whom the difference began. Rhett Sempland,
confident of his own affection and hopeful as to hers, had attempted,
with masculine futility and obtuseness, to prohibit the further
attentions of Harry Lacy.

Just as good blood, _au fond_, ran in Harry Lacy's veins as in Rhett
Sempland's, but Lacy, following in the footsteps