ur was silent, and to him the lady turned in vain. He treated her
with an elaborate politeness which sat ill on his brusque manners, and
for the most part showed no desire to enliven the prevailing dulness.
But after dinner he carried her off to the gardens on the plea of fresh
air and a fine sunset, and the girl, who liked the boy, went gladly.
Then the reason of his silence was made plain. He dismayed her by
becoming lovesick.

"Tell me your age, Alice," he implored.

"I am twenty at Christmas time," said the girl, amazed at the question.

"And I am seventeen or very nearly that. Men sometimes marry women
older than themselves, and I don't see why I shouldn't. Oh, Alice,
promise that you will marry me. I never met a girl I liked so much, and
I am sure we should be happy."

"I am sure we should," said the girl, laughing. "You silly boy! what
put such nonsense in your head? I am far too old for you, and though I
like you very much, I don't in the least want to marry you." She seemed
to herself to have got out of a sober world into a sort of Mad
Tea-party, where people behaved like pantaloons and spoke in conundrums.

The boy flushed and his eyes grew cross. "Is it somebody else?" he
asked; at which the girl, with a memory of Mr. Stocks, reflected on the
dreadful monotony of men's ways.

A solution flashed upon his brain. "Are you going to marry Lewie
Haystoun?" he cried in a more cheerful voice. After all, Lewis was his
cousin, and a worthy rival.

Alice grew hotly uncomfortable. "I am not going to marry Mr. Lewis
Haystoun, and I am not going to talk to you any more." And she turned
round with a flaming face to the cool depths of the wood.

"Then it is that fellow Stocks. Oh, Lord!" groaned Arthur, irritated
into bad manners. "You can't mean it, Alice. He's not fit to black
your boots."

Some foolish impulse roused the girl to reply. She defended the very
man against whom all the evening she had been unreasonably bitter. "You
have no right to abuse him. He is your people's guest and a very
distinguished man, and you are only a foolish boy."

He paled below his sunburn. Now he believed the truth of the horrid
suspicion which had been fastening on his mind. "But--but," he
stammered, "the chap isn't a gentleman, you know."

The words quickened her vexation. A gentleman! The cant word, the
fetish of this ring of idle aristocrats--she knew the hollowness of the
whole farce. The democrat in her made her walk off