This very ungenerous explanation was the one which Miss Victoria Smith chose to adopt as accounting for Dale Bannister's coming to Littlehill. Such an idea had never crossed her mind at first, but it became evident that a man who could leave his friend in the lurch and palter with his principles, as Dale's letter to the _Chronicle_ showed him to be doing, could only be credited with any discoverable motive less bad and contemptible than the worst through mere hastiness and ill-considered good nature. For her part, she liked a man to stick to his colors and to his friends, and not be ashamed before the tea tables of Denshire. No, she had never read his poems, she had no time, but papa had, and agreed with every word of them. "Gad! does he?" said Sir Harry Fulmer, to whom these views were expressed. "Well played the Colonel!" "What do you mean?" "Well, some of them made me sit up rather," remarked Sir Harry. "Oh, anything would make you 'sit up,' as you call it. I don't consider you a Radical." "I voted for your friend the Doctor anyhow." "Yes, that was good of you. You were the only one with an elementary sense of justice." Sir Harry's sense of justice, elementary or other, had had very little to do with his vote, but he said with honest pride: "Somebody ought to stand by a fellow when he's down." "Especially when he's in the right." "Well, I don't quite see, Miss Smith, what business it was of Roberts' to cut up the Vicar's sermon. Naturally the Vicar don't like it." "So he takes his medicine from Dr. Spink!" "Rather awkward for him to have Roberts about the place." "Oh, of course you defend him." "The Vicar's a very good fellow, though he's a Tory." "You seem to think all Tories good fellows." "So they are, most of them." "I suppose you think Mr. Bannister's right too?" "I shouldn't be so down on him as you are." "You like people who lead their friends on and then forsake them?" "Bannister never asked him to write the letter." "Well, it's not my idea of friendship. I wouldn't have a friend who thought that conduct right." "Then I think it deuced wrong," said Sir Harry promptly. "It's no compliment to a woman to treat her like a baby," remarked Tora with dignity. Sir Harry perceived that it would be to his advantage to change the subject. "Are you going skating?" he asked. "There's nothing else to do in this beastly frost." "Does the ice bear?" "Yes, they're skating on the Grange lake. I met Hume, Bannister's friend, and he told me Bannister was there." "Wasn't he going? I rather like him." "No, he was walking with Miss Fane. I believe I rather put my foot in it by asking her if she wasn't going." "Why shouldn't you?" "She said she didn't know Mrs. Delane, and looked confused, don't you know." "Hasn't Mrs. Delane called?" "It seems not," said Sir Harry. "I wonder how long they are going to stay at Littlehill?" "Forever, apparently. Shall you come to the lake?" "Perhaps in the afternoon."