The acquaintance had therefore progressed a long way since the day of Margaret's return from school. And yet it had not gone quite so far as onlookers surmised, or as Lady Caroline wished. Sir Philip was most friendly, most attentive, but he was also somewhat absurdly unconscious of remark. His character had a simplicity which occasionally set people wondering. He was perfectly frank and manly: he spoke without _arriere-pensee_, he meant what he said, and was ready to believe that other people meant it too. He had a pleasant and courteous manner in society, and liked to be on friendly terms with every one he met; but at the same time he was not at all like the ordinary society man, and had not the slightest idea that he differed from any such person--as indeed he did. He had very high aims and ideals, and he took it for granted, with a really charming simplicity, that other people had similar aims and similar (if not higher) ideals. Consequently he now and then ran his head against a wall, and was laughed at by commonplace persons; but those who knew him well loved him all the better for his impracticable schemes and expectations. But to Margaret he seemed rather like a firebrand. He took interest in things of which she had never heard, or which she regarded with a little delicate disdain. A steam-laundry in Beaminster, for example--what had a man like Sir Philip Ashley to do with a steam-laundry? And yet he was establishing one in the old city, and actually assuring people that it would "pay." He had been exerting himself about the drainage of the place and the dwellings of the poor. Margaret was sorry in a vague way for the poor, and supposed that drainage had to be "seen to" from time to time, but she did not want to hear anything about it. She liked the pretty little cottages in the village of Helmsley, and she did not mind begging for a holiday for the school children (who adored her) now and then; and she had heard with pleasure of Lady Ashley's pattern alm-houses and dainty orphanage, where the old women wore red cloaks, and the children were exceedingly picturesque; but as a necessary consequence of her life-training, she did not want to know anything about disease or misery or sin. And Sir Philip could not entirely keep these subjects out of his conversation, although he tried to be very careful not to bring a look that he knew well--a look of shocked repulsion and dislike--to Margaret's tranquil face.