courting and I bumping along on Dobbin,
lacking even my own Gilpin! Shall we gallop?"

Eileen nodded.

When at length they pulled up along the reservoir, Eileen's hair had
rebelled as usual and one bright strand eurled like a circle of ruddy
light across her cheek; but Rosamund drew bridle as immaculate as ever
and coolly inspected her companion.

"What gorgeous hair," she said, staring. "It's worth a coronet, you
know--if you ever desire one."

"I don't," said the girl, laughing and attempting to bring the insurgent
curl under discipline.

"I dare say you're right; coronets are out of vogue among us now. It's
the fashion to marry our own good people. By the way, you are
continuing to astonish the town, I hear."

"What do you mean, Mrs. Fane?"

"Why, first it was Sudbury, then Draymore, and how everybody says that
Boots--"

"Boots!" repeated Miss Erroll blankly, then laughed deliciously.

"Poor, poor Boots! Did they say _that_ about him? Oh, it really is too
bad, Mrs. Fane; it is certainly horridly impertinent of people to say
such things. My only consolation is that Boots won't care; and if he
doesn't, why should I?"

Rosamund nodded, crossing her crop.

"At first, though, I did care," continued the girl. "I was so ashamed
that people should gossip whenever a man was trying to be nice to me--"

"Pooh! It's always the men's own faults. Don't you suppose the martyr's
silence is noisier than a shriek of pain from the house-tops? I know--a
little about men," added Rosamund modestly, "and they invariably say to
themselves after a final rebuff: 'Now, I'll be patient and brave and
I'll bear with noble dignity this cataclysm which has knocked the world
galley-west for me and loosened the moon in its socket and spoiled the
symmetry of the sun.' And they go about being so conspicuously brave
that any debutante can tell what hurts them."

Eileen was still laughing, but not quite at her ease--the theme being
too personal to suit her. In fact, there usually seemed to be too much
personality in Rosamund's conversation--a certain artificial
indifference to convention, which she, Eileen, did not feel any desire
to disregard. For the elements of reticence and of delicacy were
inherent in her; the training of a young girl had formalised them into
rules. But since her debut she had witnessed and heard so many
violations of convention that now she philosophically accepted such,
when they came from her elders, merely reser