Long ago, in Gaston’s Cambridge rooms, Geff came across a French volume entitled, ‘The Bad Things which Men have said of Woman.’ He extracted therefrom, at more than one reading, such bitter nectar as his scanty knowledge of the tongue allowed. Several of the maxims had slumbered in his memory. They reawakened at this moment, and bade him play the philosopher, remember at what price per hour the heiress was about to hire him, and for what work. ‘Self-respect was in his keeping still,’ cried half a dozen wicked old well-chosen French cynics in a breath. ‘Let him retain it.’ And Geff followed his own impulse. He looked on Marjorie’s unblemished prettiness, and believed in her--with a circumspect belief. ‘One or two things, I know, want explaining.’ A wave of Miss Bartrand’s hand signalled to Geoffrey to take a chair. Then she seated herself opposite him, the rosy western afterglow falling directly on her clear, truth-telling face. ‘You thought my advertisement bizarre, did you not?’ ‘On the contrary, I thought it sensible and to the point.’ Geff’s answer was given with stiff courtesy. ‘But too independent; for I had never consulted my grandfather, understand! I never spoke to the Seigneur till an hour ago, about my having a coach. Tell me, you don’t think the worse of me for this?’ Had he fallen asleep, lying among the blue-leaved campanulas on the moor with the waving sedges at hand, with the falcon soaring high overhead; was this drawing-room, with its mirrors and rose-scents and Cupids, a dream? Could it be possible that Marjorie Bartrand, the heiress, who never bestowed a civil word upon any man, should plead, in sober reality, for his, Geff Arbuthnot’s, good opinion? ‘I am obliged to think and act for myself. There is my defence. My grandfather, whom you will see presently, is clever--oh, cleverer than any man in Guernsey, perhaps in Spain! Mathematics, classics--_you_ even could name no branch of learning, Mr. Arbuthnot, that grandpapa has not.’ ‘Of that I am sure, Miss Bartrand.’ ‘He was known in Oxford sixty years ago. The revolution so disgusted my great-grandfather with everything French that he turned Protestant out of revenge. A mean action--say?’ ‘That depends upon the manner of conversion.’ ‘Well, he had come to be Seigneur of Tintajeux through the inheritance of his Guernsey wife, and to be a proper Seigneur in this country you should be a Reverend. How great-grandpapa got to be ordained I don’t know. Andros, his son, was sent to Winchester and Oxford.’ ‘The Seigneur I am about to see?’ ‘Yes, and Andros became a fellow of his college. He was one of the three best classics in Oxford. But he stands right away out of my reach.’ Marjorie stretched up her slight arms as though pointing to the inaccessible mental plane occupied by the Reverend Andros. ‘He lives with the gifted people of sixty years ago. For me that is too old.’ ‘Rather,’ said Geff, unable, though he would fain stand on his dignity, to repress a smile.